Here’s why I love heading in to the office every day!

In whatever industry we’re in, we all have good and bad days. Hopefully we all enjoy doing what we do more often than not, and make it all worthwhile. However, if you’re lucky enough to be in a job that you absolutely love, then you’ll be in tune with this article

R&D is my passion, and here at Morclean we call it RDI - Research. Development. Innovation. And while we’ve seen plenty of failures, or products that we just couldn’t get right, we’re always still delighted with the ones that make it to market and sell well

So where did it first start?

As a business we’ve always had an eye for a special, a bespoke product. Not just because we can sell it, but because we find it interesting and we like to be different. In the 80’s and 90’s we played around with a few additions and tweaks to already established products, but I guess it was the Morclean bin wash that first put us on the R&D map

There was nothing new about the concept of washing bins, but we wanted to better it and improve the process, and we did this with our background of water filtration and treatment. So, we pushed the boundaries and added 3, then 4 and finally 6 stages of water treatment to our multi award winning and best selling Custom Plus machine

Then we looked at below and above ground options of water treatment in the vehicle wash industry, a sector that we feel we’re strong in. Along came a series of new ideas, surface mounted tanks, inflatable wash pads, and generally we made improvements and changes to solve the needs of our clients

But it was the Morclean surface mounted semi-permanent wash pad that solved a problem not everyone knew they had, and in the beginning it was perhaps one of the hardest ones to sell when it was first launched around 2015

If you haven’t had to research how to wash vehicles legally and properly, then you might not realise the issues you need to address. Generally speaking, if you read the EA Guidelines then vehicles should be washed in a dedicated, impermeable and isolated area and surrounded by a kerb to prevent contaminated wash water escaping to surface drains or water course. Easy enough, but do do this practically that’s a lot of holes to dig and a commitment to infrastructure, with a lot of mess along the way

Then the Morclean surface mounted wash pad was born, zero excavation, no mess, no dilapidation, movable, quick to install, totally surface mounted. And along the way we developed the BlueBox and GreyBox with are also surface mounted to provide an interceptor for the wash water. Before we knew it, our customers could see why this product was so unique and the wash pads were, and still are, in demand

Not wishing to stand still, we then looked at water reduction and using much lower volumes of water to clean with. Our LoFlow series of machines came first, the equivalent cleaning effect of a jet wash but using a third of the water, and as the awards came in we also developed our range of steam cleaners, culminating in the Thermasteam mobile trailer mounted unit for chemical free graffiti cleaning, which we launched at the Cleaning Show London

Somewhere in between all of this activity, we played around with solar powered panels for our bin wash, dabbled with rotary head cleaning and conveyor belt cleaning, and we enjoyed the mix of problem solving and innovation. Our X and XL bin wash machines then came along, and we’ve added more inflatable wash pads to our range of vehicle wash systems. Overall we’ve increased the portfolio of machines we sell and enjoyed around 60% success when we measure R&D versus marketable products

So when and where do we stop? We don’t.

At the moment we’re trying to push secondary engines into the bin. This means that most if not all portable high pressure steam cleaners or pressure washers need an engine to power them if no mains power is available.

While battery powered units seem to still sit on the shelf due to weight and cost, we’ve pointed towards an energy source that’s already there. The vehicle itself. Presently we’re prototyping machines that can run from the 12v vehicle battery and continually developing systems that still use much less water than traditional machines

So at the end of all this info, I hope you can now see why I started off by saying why I actually love coming to work!