The Stars Came out on LADAs Night…
The third Laundry & Drycleaning Awards 2017 – The LADAs – was held on Thursday 2 November at Mercedes-Benz World in Surrey. 245 guests gathered for a spectacular evening celebrating the industry’s stars, among the stunning backdrop of beautiful cars. And what a night it was. Our biggest and best awards event yet.
The evening started with a champagne reception providing the perfect opportunity for guests to catch up with friends and acquaintances, both old and new.
And for those with a bit of a competitive streak there was the F1 simulator challenge. A chance for some to showcase their driving skills in front of an attentive audience!
Throughout the evening guests were entertained by magician Collin Claus who amazed all with his magical talents and slight of hand. And we were delighted to welcome back Alison David to the stage to hear her soulful singing again this year.
Following a delicious three-course meal our compere for the evening, radio DJ Russ Williams, got all the guests involved in a game of heads or tails, with the winner taking away two bottles of champagne to share at their table. Russ then had the pleasure of introducing the awards to the audience.
Our congratulations to all the winners and to everyone who was nominated for an award. You are all true stars and a credit and inspiration to your industry.
Mark Gleed from MEG Events, organiser of the LADAs, commented:
“The judging panel really had their work cut out this year with so many high calibre entries. Our judges are all experts from different fields of the industry. They first judged the nominations from the packs received. Once these had been considered a formal meeting was held with members of the Laundry & Cleaning Today team, where voting took place to ensure that the awards are regulated fairly and consistently.”
We must also thank and applaud all of our sponsors, without you this event would not have been possible. We really do appreciate your support.
And thank you to everyone who kindly donated to our charity raffle in aid of Pancreatic Cancer UK, with a special mention to Delia Cannings from the UK Housekeepers Association (UKHA) for her help with prize donations.
We are delighted to announce that we raised £3,660 on the night for Pancreatic Cancer UK. £1,000 of this was kindly donated by Linen Connect. Way beyond our wildest expectations! We are truly humbled by people’s generosity. Thanks so much to everyone for their support. These events don’t simply happen. A huge amount of work goes into the planning and then the execution on the day.
So – a big ‘shout out’ to the Laundry & Cleaning Today team for all their help. It was a great team effort.
The Laundry & Cleaning Today team would sincerely like to thank everyone who came to the LADAs this year. It was a truly memorable evening, a huge amount of fun and a lot of laughter!
We had such fantastic feedback on the night, and on Twitter, that we’re already making our plans to go even bigger and even better next year!
The LADAs in numbers
- 245 guests
- One spectacular venue – Mercedes-Benz World in Surrey
- A 96-bottle champagne reception!
- F1 simulator driving competition
- A three-course meal
- At least 130 bottles of wine!
- 12 awards given to 12 deserving winners
- Over 100 tweets using the #LADAs2017
- A 5am finish for many!
- One raffle with amazing prizes, raising £3,660 for Pancreatic Cancer UK, including £1,000 generously donated on the night by Linen Connect!
The winners for 2017 are
- Best New Product: Ecolab Oxyguard 40
- Best Newcomer: Waeshous
- Commercial Laundry of the year: Fishers
- Drycleaner / Wetcleaner of the year: Elite Drycleaners
- Green Impact: Connoisseur Drycleaners
- Machinery Distributor: HJ Weir Engineering
- Most Innovative: CLEAN
- SME Laundry: CanDo Laundry
- Trainee of the year: Ideal Manufacturing Ltd’s Chris Francis
- Training & Education: Electrolux Professional’s Mick Christian
- Unsung Hero: AGS’s Greg Simons
- Lifetime Achievement: Dane Realstar’s Paul Higgs
Our sponsors
The LADAs just simply could not happen without the support of our sponsors. Our sincere thanks to you all. It was a pleasure to work with all of you.
The golf day
A special nod to our star golfer, who came first in the LADAs golf day, James Sampson from LSI Energy.
Thank you so much for a wonderful event and evening last night, thoroughly enjoyed it and thank you for inviting me to present an award. Both of you work so hard and to see the culmination of hard work giving reward last night must be pleasing. Please keep it up and it is a pleasure to be associated with you.
Just a line to say that I thought last night went very well and was even better than the previous one.
Huge congratulations on the fantastic event last night. It was a real privilege to be involved.
It was indeed a pleasure tonight and congratulations with a fantastic event.
Thank you again for a wonderful evening, I thoroughly enjoyed my first LADA’s experience! You produced and hosted a fabulous event!
Thanks for a great evening; as usual top notch! Here’s to 2018 and CleanEx!
Huge congratulations on putting on such a successful event. It’s getting bigger and better every time!
It was great to see so many folks from across the industry and our whole team had a lovely time. Also, we were absolutely delighted that Chris won best apprentice – such a lovely guy and genuinely well deserved.
Just a note to say a huge thank you for such a great event last week. I imagine people will be talking about it for the next 12 months!
Thank you for organising a great evening last night, we all enjoyed it enormously.
A little note to say a huge thank you. We had an absolutely fab time, the event was set in a lovely location amongst old and new friends. We know only too we’ll the time effort, sweat and tears that goes into organising these events. You should both be very proud.
I hope you had a great weekend and are fully recovered from Thursday night. It was a hugely successful evening, thank you and congrats. It looked like a really successful evening from our side of the fence and I hope it was from yours also. Very nice to see many of our customers receiving awards – Elite Drycleaners and Waeshous.