Cleanzine: your weekly cleaning and hygiene industry newsletter 18th April 2024 Issue no. 1110
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Farnek acquires Smashing! Cleaning Services
UAE-based total facilities management company, Farnek, has announced that it has acquired multi award-winning specialist hygiene cleaning company Smashing! Cleaning Services.
Smashing! which was formed in 2004, is one of the UAE's leading hygiene cleaning service providers, with an annual turnover of over AED 10 million. Its 65 highly skilled technicians manage 2,500 customers, many of which are major branded corporations in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, such as Emirates, Jumeirah, Etihad, Gargash, Nestle, Arabtec, Serco and Aldar.
Its specialist services include air duct cleaning, indoor air quality testing, kitchen exhaust cleaning and pipeline disinfection. In total Smashing! offers over 32 different types of services, many of which have a distinct focus on improving the indoor environment for the residential, commercial and industrial sectors.
"These specialist services dovetail neatly with our existing proposition - traditional FM, sustainable maintenance, smart home solutions and SME packages," commented Markus Oberlin, CEO, Farnek.
"We envisage benefits from the economies of scale this acquisition will offer - that is a broader range of services for each call out, as well as online access to these new services.
"The technicians at Smashing! are all highly trained, suitably qualified and are conversant with the relevant local authority certifications and comply with global industry associations and international quality, health, safety and environmental standards, providing synergy with the technical abilities of our existing workforce."
Smashing's current headquarters in Al Barsha, will be utilised in future by Farnek as a materials and storage facility, while all of Smashing's employees will be relocated to Farnek's head office, less than five kilometres away.
James Day, who is currently the managing director of Smashing! will head up the new Hitches & Glitches entity, assisted by Lukas Eigenmann, COO of Farnek.
James says: "I believe that being acquired by Farnek, will bring all of the advantages of a large quality-focused company to the staff and customers of Smashing. Having 3,500 employees operating throughout the UAE, will help to service our customers even more efficiently but with the same highly trained technicians, that won't compromise Smashing's unrivalled customer service standards.
"Farnek is the region's top sustainability consultancy and has a vast amount of experience with energy management programmes, which will provide a great deal of synergy with our own environmental initiatives. At the same time through the Farnek and Hitches & Glitches brands, together we can broaden the range of services we can offer."
Other services offered by Smashing! include cleaning beaches, apartment garbage chutes, laundry ducts, grease traps, drain lines and mist filters as well as HVAC (heating, ventilation, air conditioning) duct smoke testing.
Smashing's local certifications include Dubai Municipality, Dubai Police, RTA and Emirates Health Services and Trakhees. It is also internationally certified by Indoor Air Quality Association and National Fire Protection Agency.
Smashing! has also been recognised for the quality of its operation at numerous awards ceremonies, which culminated last year being voted FM Middle East Cleaning Company of the year for 2015, by FM industry peers and experts.
Markus Oberlin said of the acquisition: "This new acquisition is yet another milestone for Farnek as we continue to roll out our strategic development plans with the aim of becoming the top FM service provider in the UAE."
Image (from left) Markus Oberlin, Leny Day, managing partner, Smashing! and James Day
T: 800 FARNEK (327635)
E: [email protected]
W: www.khaleejtimes.com
11th August 2016