Narrowly escaping being caught up in the latest Middle Eastern conflict, Prochem sales director Phil Jones is back from Dubai with this report…

After a highly successful visit to the company’s local distributors in Dubai, Phil‘s flight back to the UK left at 14.00 on Friday 27th February.

Luckily, it was on time – on waking the following morning, Phil discovered that local airspace had been closed shortly behind him, with missile, drone and aircraft strikes escalating across the region.

“I was very lucky to get out on one of the last flights available,” he reports.

In addition to Prochem‘s extensive network of distributors supporting cleaning markets within
the UK and the EU, its products are being well received in the Middle Eastern (GCC) region.
Prochem cleaning solutions and technology have been available in both the UAE and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for some years now, making a positive impact on cleaning major government and commercial sites as well as Royal palaces. Now, more Middle Eastern countries are making enquiries to supply the Prochem brand to customers.

This development was to take Phil to the GCC to research need and opportunity as well as provide training and advice to new and potential clients.

First stop was Riyadh in Saudi Arabia on the overnight flight from Heathrow to meet the team from Uni-Clean Services.

Led by business partners Nasser Alhumaid and Aimen Alzrair, the company has been trading for 10 years and employs 75 staff.

Alongside their janitorial supply/distributor agreements, the two run a high-end cleaning service maintaining contracts for the upkeep of upholstery, carpets, rugs and curtains for senior government figures as well as members of the Saudi Royal family.

During his two-day stay, Phil provided product and machine training to the Uni-Clean team and
assisted on site visits to advise on the care of a mosque, a large government building and the private home of one of the Royal family princes.

Next step, Manama, capital of Bahrain, and another rapidly expanding market where Phil had been
invited to visit and meet new potential distributors such as Jeeves of Bahrain, a star performer in rug
and dry-cleaning services, now undergoing major investment and redirection to add janitorial supplies
to its market offer.

“This was a very positive meet up,” says Phil.

“Their managing director owns several other companies in the cleaning sector focussing on Prochem products and now he wants to offer them to major cleaning and FM companies in the Bahrain area as well as institutions like hotels, mosques and government buildings.”

Phil’s presentation of practical stain removal techniques to potential new customers fast-reinforced this image.

Back in the air, he headed to the UAE and a first meeting with an aviation company at Dubai
International Airport, the main transport choice for many of the major Emirati royal families.

Here, a Prochem Everest truck mounted cleaning system was fitted to a portable trolley that enables them to clean a fleet of Boeing 747s, 737s and a 777, along with a Lockheed Hercules C130, multiple helicopters and private jets.

Ex-RAF serviceman Phil was in his element!

“It became an extremely interesting visit as many of the 737s had been converted inside to contain bedrooms with ensuite showers with highly prominent gold sinks and taps,” he reflects.

One of the Boeing 747s had been converted to half passenger/ half cargo, the latter predominantly used for transporting the prized Godolphin Stables racehorses all around the world while the passenger area housed bedrooms and showers.

The flying stables will have presented cleaning challenges but it was explained to Phil that the biggest issue the team had was with bird faeces.

“Often, the planes are used for transporting hunting birds such as kestrels and hawks, extremely popular in the Middle East, and these are allowed to fly around, unrestricted, within a contained area of the fuselage during the flights,” he says.

“With up to one hundred birds on each flight at any time, the mess they leave can be considerable but the team wins through by pre-treating with Prochem’s B144 Stain Pro and then rinse extracting with the truck mount using S888 Carpetclean XL.”

Other meetings for Phil in the UAE took place with two more aviation companies, one supporting the President and governmental flights, a couple of existing distributors, and potential new clients, before his narrow escape.

Key takeaways?

“The Dubai company uses S888 Carpetclean XL as it is approved for use on aircraft by Boeing and the regulated under the Aviation Material Specification AMS1631A, meaning the product does not damage or affect any of the aircrafts’ aluminium or titanium air frames,” Phil tells us.

“And the region has a high percentage of high quality, viscose, silk and wool fibre area rugs, normally placed on hard floors such as marble, so the significance of low moisture or dry compound cleaning (C803 Fiberdri) played a great part in the training” he continues.

“Overall, the Saudi Arabian market has great potential to the cleaning industry to expand and it is growing nicely, though cautiously, with specialist training being a key factor and Prochem proud to play a part in that development.

“Meanwhile, the market in Bahrain seemed slightly faster paced than in KSA with plenty of interest and excitement in the cleaning industry,” he concludes.

Phil has form with last minute dashes out of war zones. “Coming back from holiday to the Sahara in Libya in 2011, myself and some friends got stuck in the Libyan Civil War and Arab Spring uprising for a week.

“While being transported back to Tripoli at night, we were shot at a couple of times but we’re eventually evacuated out with the assistance of the UK and US governments to Malta by sea and finally a flight home!”

Memo to all: it might be worth asking him where he’s going on holiday next year so we don’t go to the same place!

https://www.unicleaningservice.com/en