LAA Member of the Month – Gouge Linen and Garment Services
Interview with John Calleja, CEO
Q: How long has the laundry been in business?
John Calleja: Gouge Linen and Garment Services has been in the Priestly family ownership since 1989. Starting out as a dry cleaner and small commercial laundry operation, Gouge now produces around 500 tonnes of linen and uniforms per week across 3 laundries in Victoria, including a brand new, 9000sqm state of the art laundry in Geelong.
Q: What sort of work do you do?
John Calleja: Gouge has a long-standing reputation for quality linen, great customer service and high fill rates across the accommodation, healthcare and uniforms sectors. We supply to hospitals, aged care, hotels, manufacturers, emergency services and everything in between.
We supply customers of all sizes including 1100 bed hotels and 700 bed hospitals through to small country motels and aged care homes.
Our coverage throughout Victorian and Southern NSW is extensive with our fleet of over 60 vehicles based at our laundries and depots touching nearly every town!
Gouge also operates dry cleaning operations in Shepparton and Melbourne.
Q: What drives your team each day?
John Calleja: At Gouge we strive to maintain a family culture where our staff are looked after and supported. This has created a drive in our business where our teams are committed to delivering for Gouge and our customers. This means there is an unrelenting focus on ensuring high fill rates, delivering quality linen and providing great service. Whether it has been through floods, pandemics or just a normal day, our teams work to deliver our customers a special service.
Q: What does the next year – five years look like for the laundry?
John Calleja: Our new Geelong plant provides plenty of capacity for growth in Victoria and we are excited about growing our customer base over the next 12 months and 5 years.
As a business that continually invests in our laundries, we see a continued trend to automation and our plants are set up to be able to adopt that technology as it comes onstream and is commercially viable.
Q: How long have you been a member of the LAA?
John Calleja: Gouge has been a longstanding member of the LAA for many years, and I currently serve on the LAA Board as well as in the role of Treasurer.
We see many benefits of being a member of the LAA including networking with other laundries, education programs for our staff through the monthly webinars and the advocacy role the LAA plays in supporting our industry.
Q: Have you been to the Conference or participated in any webinars?
John Calleja: We had 7 of our team go to the LAA conference in Brisbane 2024 which provided enormous value in terms of seeing advancements in technology and efficiency, hearing from and meeting with major equipment and service providers, and visiting great laundries. We plan to have the same for Sydney 2026.
Generally, we have 1-2 staff members attend the LAA webinars the webinars cover various parts of our operations such as utilities, chemicals, HR, operations etc so we will have different members of our team attending each webinar.
Q: What would you like from the LAA in the next 12 months?
John Calleja: The laundry industry is always changing and the LAA will have an important role to support the industry through that change. In particular, the increased capability for the LAA to provide advocacy on behalf of our members to assist in influencing regulatory and industrial relations change will be important.
https://www.gouge.com.au/
