The new Masterton Liquid Laundromat outlet in Jackson St. PHOTO/KAREN COLTMAN
KAREN COLTMAN
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The Masterton Liquid Laundromat outlet in Jackson St opened last week, the 89th launched in New Zealand.
It’s a 24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week operation.
Annette Stewart from Eketahuna was using it when the Times-Age visited. She had driven south to get three loads of washing done.
She has two young adult sons and a 9-year-old daughter. Her Australian washing machine broke down during the first lockdown and the part shipped across the Tasman hasn’t fixed the problem. But there was always washing to do so the laundromat was the answer to her dirty clothes problem.
Both her sons, 20 and 17, work in physical jobs, the elder as a shearer and the younger clearing gorse.
“Their clothes are pretty dirty and can’t just hang around,” Stewart said. “For me to get the washing all sorted out in a short time, the laundromat is what I need.”
The mother of three had the whites, dyed clothes, and towels in separate baskets and two machines on the go at once. She purchased her pay-as-you-go card, topped it up, scanned it and the machines set to work.
“Wow so fast, too easy.”
Advertising manager for the company Cath Stewart said nowadays people were time poor and laundromats were being used by more than just people without access to a washing machine at home.
“Apartment dwellers and busy people in town are coming to use the machines and have a coffee while their belongings are being washed,” Stewart said.
The company spent a few hundred thousand dollars setting up the Masterton outlet. The laundromat is always open.
There are security cameras at the site but in Stewart’s experience laundromats were kept clean by users, and the machines not interfered with.
There was no cash on site.
Hastings-based owner of the chain Bruce Davidson expanded into laundromats 10 years ago.
His company, Diamond Laundry Group has more than 100 permanent employees based in Hawke’s Bay, Dannevirke, Wellington and Taupo.
