194 Business View - August 2015
HEALTHCARE
care linen provider in Louisiana, supplying everything
from scrubs and bedding, to patient wear, surgical
linens, bath towels, and wash cloths. The company
employs over 200 workers and serves 125 hospitals,
clinics, surgical centers, and nursing homes from the
southeast Louisiana/Texas border to the gulf coast of
Mississippi, covering an approximate radius of 250
miles from the center of Baton Rouge.
Its plant, a state-of-the-art, 48,000 square foot facil-
ity, was built in 2009, and is capable of producing
840,000 pounds of linen per week. Two years ago, the
company picked up another location in New Orleans
– a retrofitted, 15,000 square foot facility, capable of
producing 285,600 pounds per week. The new facility
allows Westport Linen to expand north into the Missis-
sippi delta and west into northern Louisiana and east
Texas. The company is contemplating opening a third
facility in southwest Louisiana, sometime soon.
There was a time when hospitals did their own laundry.
But over the years, more and more healthcare facili-
ties found that the costs in time, equipment, and labor
were unsustainable. Also, they didn’t have the capac-
ity to constantly upgrade their laundry facilities with
the latest technologies or apply the industry’s best
practices to insure well-laundered, sanitized linen. So,
they began to outsource. Lefeaux explains: “We have
closed seven OPLs (on-premise laundries) for that ex-
act reason. They don’t want to invest the millions of
dollars into the laundry equipment, nor do they have
the personnel or the management expertise to operate
them efficiently. Their core focus is patient satisfaction
and as an outsourcer, we become a true partner. We
consider ourselves an extension of the hospital.”
In 2007, Westport Linen became the 30th laundry
in the U.S. to become certified by the Hospital Laun-
dry Accreditation Council (HLAC). To qualify for HLAC
