Bewleys a clean deal for Moran

One More Thing:HAVING SPENT the guts of €700 million buying Bert Allen's six Bewleys hotels, Limerick businessman Tom Moran is hoping to clean up on the deal in more ways than one.

The acquisition, finalised recently, also involved a laundry in Gorey, Co Wexford, called Matrix Ireland Ltd.

Matrix employs about 35 staff and services the laundry needs of all the Bewleys hotels here - cleaning linen for the three-star hotels at Ballsbridge, Newlands Cross, Dublin Airport and Leopardstown.

Moran's Red Cow hotel and his two London properties have outsourced their laundry needs to third parties while the Silver Springs in Cork washes and irons its own sheets and table cloths.

So will he bring it all under the one roof in Wexford? "That would be the plan," Moran told The Irish Times earlier this week. "The intention is certainly to look at it."

Any concerns or anxieties that Matrix staff might have had on the recent change of ownership were firmly banished by Moran.

"We'd be hoping to expand the laundry as well but not just now, we've a few other things to do first. It's a good business, we're keeping it."