Marta Kovalenko
Founder and plant manager
Started the whole thing out of that garage. Marta still writes the wash programs and can tell a cotton blend by feel, which the newer staff find mildly unsettling.
About us
Blemaro: the Brisbane laundry that grew up fast
Blemaro started with two secondhand washers in a Woolloongabba garage and now handles around nine tonnes of linen a week for Brisbane hotels, cafés and clinics.
That first year was mostly wholesale towels and a lot of favours. We borrowed a van, printed dockets by hand and learned pretty quickly that hospitality clients do not care how hard you worked, only whether the linen showed up before service. So we built the business around one promise: counted in, counted out, and back on your shelf when we said it would be.
Today the plant sits off Ann Street with industrial drums, a boiler we are slightly proud of, and a finishing line that runs two shifts. We have kept the small-company habit of answering the phone ourselves, which is why our office number still rings on a desk rather than into a queue.
- Family owned and operated, no franchise behind it
- Brisbane based, with drivers who know the one-way streets
- Hospitality, healthcare and household work under one roof
How we got here
Eighteen years in six short chapters
No grand plan, just a series of moments where saying yes to the next client meant buying another machine.
2007
The garage years
Two machines, one van, and a regular run of towels for three cafés in West End. The whole payroll was two people.
2011
First proper plant
We leased a unit in Woolloongabba with room for six drums and enough power to run a flatwork ironer without tripping the board.
2014
Garment care added
Dry cleaning came in because hotel managers kept asking who pressed their suits. It turned out to be a service we were good at.
2018
Barcode tracking
Every bag and every batch got a scan point. Missing pillowcases dropped to almost nothing within a month of going live.
2021
Rental linen launched
We started holding buffer stock for clients so a broken extraction fan or a double-booked function room would not kill a weekend.
2025
Where we are now
Sixteen permanent staff, seven vans on the road and roughly 640 business accounts across the greater Brisbane area.
The crew
The people who actually handle your order
No call centre. If your delivery is late, the person who tells you is one of these names.
Nathan Brooks
Head of operations
Runs the routes and the night shift. Nathan is the one who calls you before breakfast when a venue suddenly needs forty extra sets for a function.
Sophie Atkinson
Garment care lead
Twenty-two years on the spotting bench. Sophie handles the wedding dresses, the beaded jackets and the things people thought were finished.
Grant Halloran
Account manager, hospitality
Looks after the hotel and restaurant contracts. Grant knows your linen count better than some of your own staff do, and he has the spreadsheets to prove it.
Ellie Tran
Quality control
Every batch gets checked before it is packed. Ellie is the reason stains come back to the bench instead of going out on the van.
Yusuf Demir
Maintenance and fleet
Keeps seven vans and a boiler alive. Yusuf also handles the delivery runs on Saturdays when the northside route gets busy.
Selected work
A few jobs from the last couple of years
Some of these were one-off rescues, others are standing contracts we have run for most of a decade.
What we believe
Boring reliability beats clever promises
We are not going to tell you we reinvented laundry. What we did was decide that the least interesting parts matter most: same driver, same handover time, same folding spec, every single week. When clients stop thinking about their linen, we have done our job.
The other half of it is honesty about limits. If a thirty-year-old coat cannot be saved, we say so before you pay. If your water supply is hard enough to grey out whites, we tell you what that means for your kitchen towels. Nobody enjoys that conversation, but it is cheaper than a complaint later.
- Fabric first: we pick the program, not the fastest slot
- Water and energy metered per batch, reviewed every quarter
- Staff trained on the spotting bench before they touch the presses
16
Permanent staff on the floor
7
Vans on Brisbane routes
9 t
Linen handled each week
11 yr
Average client relationship
Working with us
Four habits that keep the relationship calm
We measure before we quote
Nobody likes a price that moves in month two. We weigh your first two collections, then set a rate we can hold.
One name, one number
You get a named contact with a direct line. No ticket numbers, no explaining your site to a different person each time.
Reports you can read
Monthly weights, re-wash rates and turnaround times, written in plain English. Useful when you have to justify a cost line.
Exit without drama
Accounts run month to month. If we stop being worth it, you can leave with thirty days notice and no penalty clause.
Full contract terms and cancellation rules are set out on our terms and conditions page, and we explain how we handle client records in the privacy policy.
In their words
What long-term clients say after a few years
We have been with Blemaro since 2016 and I think I have called them about a problem three times in that whole stretch. Every one of those calls was answered by someone who already knew our site. That is the part other laundries never quite manage.
Rebecca Lindqvist Operations director, hotel group in the CBD
Next step
Come and look at the plant, or just ask us something
We show people around most weeks. Bring your worst-stained tablecloth and we will tell you honestly what is possible.
Call the office
Weekdays from 6:30am. If it rings out, the crew are on the floor and will call you back the same morning.
+61 7 3198 4527
Email us the details
Send volumes, frequencies and any fabric worries and we will come back with a quote, usually the same working day.
Visit the plant
Free parking out the back after 9am. Ring the bell at the roller door and someone will walk you through.
Heritage Lanes, 80 Ann Street, Brisbane QLD 4000, Australia