Job shadowing to the Netherlands from 13 to 15 May 2024

Puhastusekspert led a job shadowing to Amsterdam from 13 to 15 May 2024. Consortium members from Tartu University Hospital, North Estonia Medical Centre, East-Tallinn Central Hospital, P. Dussmann, Järva County Hospital, Arkaadia OÜ, SOL Baltics OÜ and Elron Liinirongide AS participated in the job shadowing. The job shadowing was supported by the Erasmus+ consortium learning mobility project No. 2023-1-EE01-KA121-VET-000133792.

Participants were trained by the following companies: Duplex International, Kiehl KG, Vileda Professional, Johannes Kiehl KG, HAKO Ground & Garden and Unger Professional. We learned about professional single disc machines, robot scrubber-driers, sustainable cleaning chemicals, modern cleaning trolleys with digital systems, microfibre products and new solutions in window cleaning.

Amsterdam Interclean 2024 is the largest professional cleaning trade fair in the world, and is influential on the entire cleaning and hygiene industry. Interclean offers exciting opportunities to discover the latest in cleaning and offers the chance to discover innovative product solutions from different manufacturers. If you are in the industry but not at the Amsterdam cleaning fair, you might as well not bother – that pretty much sums up how important this fair is for the industry.

Sustainability was one of the keywords at the fair. It was exciting to see that the entirety of Europe is on the same page in this regard. Different manufacturers showcased environmentally friendly manufacturing processes which determine the percentage of recycled material that each product must contain in order to apply for environmental labels.

To sum up the whole fair, digitalisation is gaining momentum in the cleaning industry. Manufacturers of machinery, tissues, trolleys and various accessories all demonstrated their latest digital innovations. All this serves to improve the quality of cleaning, to draw conclusions from the data collected and to clean as optimally as possible. The need for data collection is also seen as one of the biggest emerging trends in the entire cleaning industry. AI is also increasingly used in different phases of product development.

In addition to the cleaning fair, we also had a chance to learn more about hotel cleaning – the financial manager of Hotel van de Vijesel gave the participants a thorough cleaning tour, which included the opportunity to watch a hotel room being cleaned in real-time. What really stood out was the fact that this hotel loves to use a variety of strong-smelling cleaning chemicals, whereas Estonia is moving more and more towards using just clean water and a microfibre cloth, reaching for cleaning chemicals only as needed and not as a preventive measure.

We collected a lot of information on cleaning during this job shadowing. A big advantage of learning mobility is that it allows us to hear about the experiences of other countries to broaden our horizons and allow us to adapt more quickly to various changes. The greatest reward at the end of every job shadowing is to hear fellow participants express their gratitude for a well-organised and professional experience.