The world’s largest cars laundry empire

80 years ago, German businessman Joseph Enning set up a business he discovered after spending a year studying in the United States. A car laundry. That tunnel-car-wash that saw in New York had only a conveyor belt, a couple of groups of brushes and a blower to dry the cars. In 1964, he decided to inaugurate the first car wash under the name of MRW-Uuto-Service GmbH. And from there, the rest is history.

At that time, Europe had nothing similar. The laundries were completely manual, scarce and expensive. It imported a concept that the United States had been using since the 1950s and, for practically 20 years operating in practically alone, it had hardly any competition.

Since then, MR.Wash has opened more than 30 locations in Germany, and Clean more than 8 million cars a year. They are numbers that compete with the laundries installed in the gas stations of the main fuel distributors.

The German group is currently considered as the largest automatic laundry operator by center volume (How many cars washed a single center per day), attending up to 5,000 cars per day, 300 every hour with about 100 workers per center. For more context it is convenient to know that in Spain, One of Norauto’s longest tunnels (50 meters)accompanied by a total of 24 boxes, manages to make about 30,000 washes per year.

To achieve this volume of daily washes, the company needs unusual laundry. Some of them, Like the open in Bonn in 2021They have a total of three floors and carry a cost of 20 million euros at their opening. An area of ​​5,800 square meters in which plants construction is key to taking advantage of spaces.

In Spain, one of Norauto’s longest tunnels (50 meters), accompanied by a total of 24 boxes, achieves about 30,000 washes per year. A volume of washing remarkably lower than that of a single MR.Wash center.

There is also nothing similar in Europe or outside it: the maximum capacity usually is around 1,000 daily washes. This ends up translating into an annual turnover, with 2023 figures, 140 million euros only in washes. To which we must add the adjacent service stations of the group itself (110 million) and another 40 for its oil change services.

The business and customer service model goes far beyond car washing.

• In the facilities there is cafeteria to wait while they wash in the car
• There is library service (in this case, free)
• In addition to automated washing services, facilities include manual washing boxes
• Basic maintenance services are offered, such as oil changes

If you wonder how much it costs to wash the car in such a place, the answer is … it depends. The basic programs start from 12 euros, which include interior washing up to 40 euros, and the most premium washing rises to 75 euros including tires, shine and waxed. As a curiosity, in some of the MR.Wash centers, the manager himself manually ends the service if the client is not satisfied.

Image | MR.Carwash