Every cleaner asks the same question, and most of the answers online are useless because they quote a cost per litre. That is not where the money is.

This page will not tell you what wet cleaning costs, because we do not know your plant. What it will do is set out the six lines that actually change when you add the process, so you can put your own numbers against them and get an answer you can trust.

1. Chemistry per kilo

The straightforward one. LANADOL doses at a known rate — 5 ml per litre for AKTIV or X-PRESS, the same again for APRET in the final bath — so once you know your machine’s bath volume and load size, the cost per kilo is arithmetic. Call us with your machine model and we will do it with you.

Two honest points. Chemistry is a real cost, where solvent is largely a recovered one — a dry cleaning machine distils and reuses. And the LANADOL detergent line is not the cheapest thing you could put in a washer. Anyone comparing these two lines alone will conclude wet cleaning is dearer. That comparison is wrong, but it is wrong for reasons that live in the other five lines.

Use the cost calculator to put your own machine size and load count against this line — it gives you chemistry cost per load, per kilo and per garment.

2. Cycle time

Solvent cycles run roughly 40 to 50 minutes on perc, and 55 to 75 minutes on the alternatives — hydrocarbon, SolvonK4 and GreenEarth sitting at the longer end. Wet cleaning cycles are typically shorter, and the LANADOL DRY process with X-PRESS is designed specifically to compress the wash and dry side.

What this is worth depends entirely on whether your machine is the bottleneck. In a plant running one machine flat out, cycle time is money. In a plant where the machine waits for the press, it is worth nothing. Be honest about which one you are.

3. Finishing labour — the line that decides it

This is where the answer actually comes from, and it is the line everyone leaves out.

Finishing is the most expensive thing in a garment plant. It is a person, all day, and you cannot buy your way out of it. So a process that changes seconds-per-piece on the press changes your cost base in a way that chemistry never will.

Wet cleaning can go either way here. Done properly — fibre-protecting agent in the final bath, moisture-sensed drying that stops at the right residual moisture, the right finishing equipment — garments come to the press damp, relaxed and easy, and finishing time goes down. Done badly — detergent only, no APRET, garments dried bone dry — finishing time goes up and the whole thing looks like a mistake.

We have watched plants trial wet cleaning, skip the finishing agent, conclude it is slow, and go back to solvent. They were measuring a process they were not running.

4. What you stop paying for

These do not show up in a cost-per-kilo comparison at all, and for some plants they are the whole argument:

• Solvent purchase and top-up.
• Still residue disposal, and the contractor who takes it.
• Filter and cartridge replacement.
• Vapour monitoring and the compliance work around it.
• Solvent storage — bunding, separation, the space it occupies.
• The insurance and lease conversations that come with keeping solvent on site. Ask anyone who has tried to put a perc machine into a new shopping centre tenancy lately.

5. Equipment

If you already run a programmable washer-extractor and a moisture-sensing dryer, the wash and dry side is mostly a programming job. What plants usually add is finishing: a form finisher, a trouser topper, a pressing table suited to damp work.

That is real capital, and pretending otherwise helps nobody. But it is equipment that improves your finishing on every garment, not just wet cleaned ones. See adding wet cleaning to your plant for what the change actually involves.

6. What you can now accept

The line nobody counts. Wet cleaning lets you take in work you currently turn away or send out:

• Wedding dresses, where water is the only thing that removes the sugar and perspiration that turn a dress brown three years later.
• Leather and suede, if you add LICKER — high-value work most shops subcontract.
• Beaded, sequinned and coated garments that solvent damages.
• Aged care and healthcare contracts where residents’ personal clothing has a hygiene obligation attached to it.
• Customers who ask for it. There are more of them every year, and they are not the price-sensitive ones.

So what is the answer?

For most plants, wet cleaning costs slightly more in chemistry, roughly the same or less in cycle time, materially less in finishing labour if the process is run properly, and removes a set of solvent overheads entirely. The work it lets you accept is usually the largest number on the page and the hardest to predict.

The honest version: it depends on your plant, and anyone who quotes you a figure without asking about your finishing room is selling rather than advising.

Want the sum done on your plant? Tell us your machine, your volume and what your finishing room looks like, and we will work through it with you. Call 1300 70 69 70 or get in touch. No obligation, and we will tell you if it does not stack up for you.