Cleanzine: your weekly cleaning and hygiene industry newsletter 18th April 2024 Issue no. 1110
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New technology keeps commercial spaces ultra-clean and promotes confidence and reassurance in a Covid world
Open World Technology Group (part of SIA Holding) has developed Velvet2030, a complete sanitising solution to keep viruses, bacteria and odours at bay, to help businesses clean-up their buildings and reassure their staff and customers that they are working in an ideal and safe environment.
Velvet2030 has been developed following extensive research and input from environmental experts in the Energy Safety Research Institute (ESRI) at Swansea University in Wales and the University of Arizona in the US.
With the Covid-19 vaccination programme well underway in the UK, businesses now have to promote confidence and plan for the return of employees to their places of work and for when consumers start to travel en masse once again.
Open World Technology Group focuses its cutting-edge nano-technology in high footfall areas, which include hospitals, airports, stations, hospitality venues, offices, schools and universities to make sure these environments are permanently clean and healthy.
Research has shown that poor indoor air quality is the fourth largest risk to health in the UK and a report by The Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs shows this that impacts the economy by £2.7billion a year, due to lower productivity.
Furthermore, the cost-benefit analysis reported in 2020, that illness from "dirty air" in buildings costs UK employees £990 million annually in lost wages. The successful management of indoor environments has a direct impact on health, safety, productivity and comfort and is critical for the well-being of both customers and staff.
The nano-technology application used by Velvet2030 uses an invisible coating on treated surfaces. The photo-catalytic surface creates powerful oxidisers from oxygen and humidity that neutralises viruses; eats air pollution; inhibits algae, mould and bacteria; prevents biofilms from gluing inorganic dirt to surfaces; and allows water to run off, making treated surfaces self-cleaning.
This process also encompasses a 'visual compliance technology', making it easy to spot areas which have been treated effectively and those which haven't. One application of this process has a 12-month lifecycle.
Once a surface is treated, Velvet2030 technology checks pollution and cleanliness using cloud-based monitors within a building, constantly reviewing the location and the air quality within it. Stakeholders are then alerted - via a bespoke online dashboard - if there are adverse changes to Interior Air Quality. The cleaning regime has been verified to global best-in-class standards.
Saad Audeh, co-founder of Open World Technology Group, says: "We are in a decade where greater focus on cleanliness is vital. It is paramount that companies futureproof their environments to make them as clean, safe and healthy as possible so as to maximise confidence in employees and customers, and encourage their return to normality.
"This eco-technology also creates a substantial return on investment via improved customer confidence and satisfaction. The beauty of this system is that it allows stakeholders to quantify any risk immediately, by watching live data at all times, monitor how buildings are performing and how safe they are and, where necessary, put in place the necessary measures to improve air quality and reassure staff and customers."
Open World Technology Group is already collaborating with companies including Campbell Gray Hospitality, BAM Royal Group to service Heathrow Airport's commitment to improve air in relation to tunnels and structures, and Riverstone Living, a revolutionary retirement home developer in London, whose buildings have an emphasis on quality-of-living using clean air technology.
11th February 2021