Company plans to clean up in P.C.

A typical large hotel generates about 15 pounds of dirty laundry per room per day. That works out to about one million pounds of laundry every year - enough to fill one typical household washer running constantly for a decade.

Bengt Bruce sees a profit sloshing around with all those sheets and suds and beach towels.

On Friday, Bruce's company, B&C Technologies, received its first shipment of industrial clothes washing machines from Bangkok, Thailand. In the coming months, the shipments will grow larger as the company moves into its new, larger headquarters in Panama City.

(Photo: Chris Oswald operates an ironing machine at B&C Technologies' Panama City headquarters.) Buy Photo

While another local company manufactures similar equipment, B&C is the only company in Bay County currently importing commercial laundry equipment on a large scale, according to the Bay County Economic Development Alliance.

These aren't typical laundry room staples.

The largest B&C washer - designed by the company, but built overseas to reduce costs - weighs about 9,000 pounds and is large enough for a small family to cram inside.

When B&C moves into a new, 20,000-square-foot headquarters in July, it will be the company's second major expansion in the four years since it became active in Panama City, said Bruce, who is B&C's president.

With the newest move comes vastly expanded potential, said company officials, who hope to sell 100 to 200 laundry machines this year, and 2,000 to 3,000 in three years. If these ambitious predictions pan out, Mats Bruce, Bengt's son and the company's executive vice president, said B&C could quadruple its current workforce of 12, and gross more than $20 million a year.

In four to five years, B&C might expand into manufacturing machines in Bay County as well, Mats Bruce said, if local incentives were to be comparable to those of other cities.