Some 20 to 30 per cent of laundry operators serving corporate clients in Hong Kong could shut down amid the oil crisis, with soaring fuel prices eating into their profits and forcing some to reject new orders and freeze hiring.<\/p>\n
Industry representatives said on Monday the price of industrial diesel, commonly known as \u201cred diesel\u201d, surged from about HK$6 (80 US cents) per litre in late February to as high as HK$17.50 in early April, an increase of more than 190 per cent.<\/p>\n
The sharp rise has significantly raised operating costs for laundry businesses, which rely heavily on diesel-powered boilers to generate steam for high-temperature washing and sterilisation, particularly for hospital linens and hotel laundry.<\/p>\n
Lee Lam, chairman of Yue Yi Laundry (Hong Kong) Limited, said the firm used to spend more than HK$1 million on industrial diesel and this cost rose to more than HK$5 million last month. He also expected the company to log a HK$3 million loss in April.<\/p>\n
According to Lee, his company handles more than 100 tonnes of linen and uses 12,000 litres of industrial diesel per day, with the city\u2019s main luxury hotel chains, catering chains and private hospitals among its clients.<\/p>\n
\u201cThose operators lacking cash might be forced to close as they need to pay the diesel bills. I think there would be 20 to 30 per cent of operators closing,\u201d Lee said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Some 20 to 30 per cent of laundry operators serving corporate clients in Hong Kong could shut down…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":384687,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[72,171290,113,240,171293,3267,15940,61,171288,60,171291,171286,20673,171285,171289,171287,171294,171292,214],"class_list":{"0":"post-384686","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-dragon-kong-yuen-lung","10":"tag-economy","11":"tag-hong-kong","12":"tag-hong-kong-laundry-services-association","13":"tag-hospitals","14":"tag-hotels","15":"tag-ie","16":"tag-industrial-diesel","17":"tag-ireland","18":"tag-laundry-sector","19":"tag-mark-chong-ho-fung","20":"tag-oil-prices","21":"tag-operating-costs","22":"tag-price-adjustments","23":"tag-price-controls","24":"tag-red-diesel","25":"tag-road-diesel","26":"tag-steam"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/384686","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=384686"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/384686\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/384687"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=384686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=384686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=384686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}