The two ride-on machines we bought in 2016 left the depot at the end of May and two new ones took their place. They ran their first full shift at the Kerava distribution centre on 2 June. The headline number is not the working width, which is unchanged at 85 centimetres, but the battery: 6.5 hours on one charge instead of 3.5.
That difference matters more than it sounds. The Kerava site is 11 400 square metres of coated concrete and the cleaning window runs from 21.00 to 01.00, while picking is stopped. With the old machines a crew of two had to break at around half past eleven to swap batteries, wheel the spare pack out of the charging bay and get going again. Fifteen minutes, four nights a week, for nine years.
What changed and what did not
Both new units are lithium rather than lead-acid, which is where the runtime comes from, and both meter their own detergent dosing instead of relying on a tap setting that somebody adjusted in 2019. Everything else is deliberately the same: same working width, same brush type, same controls. Retraining a crew on a machine that behaves differently costs more than the machine saves.
- Runtime up from 3.5 to 6.5 hours, which removes the mid-shift swap.
- Detergent use metered by the machine. On the first four shifts it ran about 11 % below the manual setting for the same floor area.
- Charging now takes 2.5 hours instead of overnight, so a machine can be turned round between an evening and an early shift.
- Noise is measurably lower, which matters at sites where the cleaning window overlaps with a shift that is still working.
Where they will be
One machine is assigned to the Kerava round and one stays at the depot as the floating unit for the Vantaa and Espoo sites and for shutdown weeks. The two 2022 machines carry on unchanged; nothing was retired early to make room.
The old units went to a dealer as part exchange rather than to scrap. Both were still working, and a machine with nine years of logbook behind it is worth more to somebody with a smaller floor area than it was to us.
What it means for clients
If your site is currently cleaned in two passes because of a battery break, tell us — the schedule may be able to shrink. We are not re-quoting contracts automatically, but we will re-price on request, and we will say so plainly when the answer is that nothing changes.