HOLTEN – Disinfect your shopping cart before you can run errands or wait for the supermarket employee to clean the carts. This must be different, thought two Holtense entrepreneurs: with a shopping cart wash.
Floris Schoemaker, owner of the Holtense company Steel Bastardz, notes that hygiene in the supermarkets can be better done to prevent coronal contamination. “At most supermarkets you first grab your shopping cart, then walk in and disinfect your hands and the handles of the shopping cart with hygiene wipes. That’s mopping with the tap open.”
It could be different
He explains: “You’ve already touched the cart with your hands, and you only disinfect the handles while touching the car on other sides. In addition, supermarkets actually leave it to the customer to clean up or not. While it should be the case that an already disinfected shopping cart is ready for the customer. In short, this has to be done differently.”
Find a solution
With this issue in mind, Schoemaker and his colleague Mike Wolters and fellow entrepreneur Hans van Geest of Holtense Metalin, sat down. To find an answer to the question of whether they could find a solution with their knowledge and experience in developing and producing steel and plastic products.
For a week they looked at all kinds of possible designs and prototypes for a shopping cart wash. The biggest challenge was not so much production, but above all a mist system with the right amount of disinfectant soap. “First, the drug must disinfect properly without harming people. Another condition was that the car wash should be easy to use for the shopkeeper. After all, he is responsible for the proper disinfection of the cars and ready for use for his customers.”
Stainless steel port
The result is the Destiport, a type of stainless steel gate about 1 meter 70 high and less than half a metre wide through which the shopping cart is guided underneath. The system is equipped with a misting system, a water hose and dosing pump that mixes the right amount of disinfectant soap with water. “All you need is a water connection and a shop assistant who takes the used cars through the car wash.” Shopping baskets can also be disinfected. For this, the three entrepreneurs have designed a rail system on which the baskets hang.
Now that there is a system that ensures clean shopping carts, according to Schoemaker, it is high time for a ‘shopping cart policy’. “We advise shop owners on how to use the Destiport effectively. At the entrance of the shop, a row of ‘clean’ cars must always be ready. Used and empty shopping carts must be put in a separate row. A shop assistant then takes it to the shopping cart wash, which can be fine at the back of the store or in the warehouse. Per ten the cars can be guided through the car wash where the shop assistant also wears gloves himself. The clean cars can then be put back at the entrance of the shop.”
High pressure cleaning
The Holtense entrepreneurs expect their Destiport to be a keeper. “We are going to expand the system with high pressure cleaning. Now shopping carts are completely cleaned by an external company once every few weeks or months. Given the current situation, this should also be more common. If the retailer with the Destiport can also give the shopping carts a general cleaning itself, this saves in costs. They keep it in-house and it can be done more often.”
Screw up to 300
The phone at Steel Bastardz is just not red hot. The calls are not only from the Netherlands, but also from England, Germany and even from Iceland. “We now produce an average of 100 a week, but because we have everything in-house and have developed a separate production line for this, we can increase that to 300 in the week.”
Source: Tubantia.nl
