Media Release
Wednesday, 8 March 2017
Sustainability tick for fast-growing cleaning company
Home-grown New Zealand cleaning business CrestClean has received a big tick from the country’s official ecolabelling
organisation.
CrestClean has been certified by Environmental Choice New Zealand (ECNZ) against internationally recognised standards
and principles; products and services that carry the ENCZ label must meet stringent technical standards and be shown to
have a minimal environmental impact.
Managing Director Grant McLauchlan says the ECNZ approval is a welcome boost for the company, which is on track to
double in size in the next 5-7 years. He says CrestClean, which started in 1996, has seen average annual growth of about
20 percent over the past decade. “We’ve experienced a big surge in demand for commercial cleaning services, fuelled by a
lift in the service sector, which has seen the company included three times on the annual Deloitte Fast 50 list of
rapidly growing companies.”
McLauchlan says ECNZ certification dovetails with CrestClean’s long-term commitment to sustainability and waste
management. “Sustainability has been a key pillar of the company’s strategy; we are totally committed to ensuring our
services and products have minimal adverse environmental effects.
“We’ve always sought to ensure that the systems we have in place support good environmental habits such as energy
efficiency, waste minimisation and recycling. But we also wanted to ensure the chemical products our personnel use have
minimal impact, and that our training focused on environmentally responsible cleaning methods.
“We felt we’d achieved this with good standards and systems over the past 20 years we’ve been in business, but that was
only our view.”
McLauchlan says CrestClean believed it was important to get independent, third-party validation of its environmental
approaches to doing business. “That’s why we turned to Environmental Choice. It was a logical next step and something
the market expected of us. We also wanted to send a message to our customers and the industry in general that green
issues should be taken seriously.”
Environmental Choice New Zealand General Manager Francesca Lipscombe says she is thrilled to welcome CrestClean to the
label. “They are a vibrant and savvy company that’s really going places. We were impressed both with how ready the
company was for the certification process and its utter passion about the environment which comes from the top and
permeates the whole business.
“There’s so much to admire about the approach the Crest franchises take to operate in a sustainable way with minimum
impact on the environment, and that stems from good systems and practices in training and operations. The standards of
adherence to good environmental practice are consistent across the organisation and I commend Grant and his team on how
diligently they’ve laboured to achieve this.
“We look forward to the positive impact they will have on the cleaning industry, their own customers and the community
in general.”
McLauchlan says there had been a radical shift in the type of person buying a cleaning franchise. “The commercial
cleaning industry is now viewed as a viable profession that provides a good income and lifestyle to match. Our
franchisees include former accountants, a practising lawyer and several ex-bank managers.
“CrestClean has an objective of turning the whole industry into a career path as opposed to what has traditionally been
a high-turnover industry of people who have had little or no training. We’ve tried to transform the image of the
industry and its business model, enabling people to see the cleaning industry as a lifelong career with many
opportunities.”
McLauchlan is confident CrestClean has a bright, long-term future. “We support more than 550 franchises incorporating
about 1650 personnel, who look after in excess of 4100 customers, including 350 schools. Our strategy is to grow the
business and double its size within the next five to seven years. We think this is achievable, based on the increase in
the average contract size we are seeing, along with an increase in the average gross turnover of our franchisees’
businesses.
“We’ve also targeted the education sector and have had considerable success there – we’re now the number one service
provider to schools. That has given us enormous confidence looking ahead.”
Ends