Even the most high-tech of industries needs basic support services, and that includes laundry.

But basic doesn’t always mean simple. That includes laundry, too.

At UniClean in Nashua, a subsidiary of Massachusetts-based uniform rental business UniFirst, doing the laundry means donning full-body suits that leave only the eyes exposed, and working within specialized rooms where the air is changed at high rates and pressure levels keep dust from floating in.

The idea is to meet the needs of biotech, pharmaceutical and semiconductor industries from Maine to Connecticut, which do their work in “clean rooms,” where dirt particles are measured in millionths of a meter, explained Suneela Mistry, general manager of the Nashua facility.

Even when not dealing with high-tech needs, however, laundry isn’t always straightforward at UniFirst, the facility next to the FAA Center on Northeastern Boulevard that has been cleaning uniforms in huge numbers since 1965. The UniClean operation has been in Nashua since 1977, making it one of the oldest such operations in the country.

“There are more specialized needs in uniforms. We have to adapt to them,” said Greg Mazares, general manager of the Nashua facility, during a tour Thursday that featured Mayor Donnalee Lozeau.

Mazares ticked off specialized uniforms that include anti-static materials, “barrier” lab coats for medical facilities that have to shed blood and other fluids, flame-resistant materials, and uniforms that have to meet other OSHA hazard-risk categories.

Mike Croatti, senior vice president and grandson of the company’s founder, Aldo Croatti, pointed to the needs of electrical workers.

“There are guys who have been hit by an arc flash and they’ve survived; the garment has protected them,” he told Lozeau, who visited UniFirst at Croatti’s invitation.

Cleaning such garments can’t alter their special qualities, which is why UniFirst has 40 different cleaning formulas and wash cycles that can last from 20 minutes to an hour and a half.

Although it’s still owned by the Croatti family, and they like to talk about the company being founded in a horse barn in Dorchester, Mass., in 1936, UniFirst has become a huge, publicly traded company. It has about 11,000 employees in 220 locations, with annual revenues of $1.26 billion, and is the third-largest uniform supply company in North America by sales, behind Cintas and G&K Services.

The Nashua facility, which roughly doubled in size almost a decade ago to more than 80,000 square feet, cleans a whopping 225,000 pounds of laundry a week, ranging from doctors’ medical coats to oil-spill rags. It serves roughly 5,000 customers, according to company figures, and the facility’s 171 employees include 112 people who live within Nashua itself. The UniClean facility, one of 10 such sites throughout the country, is a self-contained unit with the factory; it does about 10 percent of the total business for the Nashua facility, Mazares estimated.

Despite all that size, the UniFirst facility is easy to overlook, since it’s sitting on short, dead-end Industrial Park Drive, with almost no sign along the well-traveled Northeastern Boulevard directing attention to it. It has rarely been featured in The Telegraph .

Inside the building, however, operations are impossible to overlook, because of their sheer scale.

The facility uses eight washing machines, each of which can handle between 250 pounds and 600 pounds of laundry at a time, and five dryers that are each big enough to hold a motorcycle, with sidecar. Shirts are pressed but most pants go into a steam tunnel bigger than some apartments which “dewrinkles” them at temperatures of up to 290 degrees.

The company’s main business is to provides uniforms for companies, picking them up weekly for cleaning and repair, then returning them – although it also makes and sells clothing, too. Every day, tens of thousands of shirts, pants, towels, rugs, coats, and other garments move throughout the facility, most bearing barcodes that allow them to be automatically sorted by route – the Nashua plant has 35 different truck routes that cover firms up to 45 miles away – the day of pickup, the type of garment, and even by the individual.

It’s part of investment in automation that UniFirst officials say is necessary to stay competitive.

From the market’s point of view, it seems to be working. The stock is at around $95 a share, close to its all-time high.

The company appears to have left behind any concerns about its reputation linked to 1980s pollution in Woburn, Mass., that led to the book and movie “A Civil Action.”

Still, dry cleaning operations of any scale are often regarded with concern because solvents and cleaners can be toxic. UniFirst officials said Nashua’s wastewater treatment plant regularly audits them for compliance.

The company also drew a more light-hearted form of attention last year when CEO Ron Croatti donned a wig to be incognito for a reality TV show called “Undercover Boss” on CBS.

David Brooks can be reached at 594-6531 or dbrooks@nashua
telegraph.com. Also, follow Brooks on Twitter (@Telegraph_DaveB).