BÖWE has been building dry cleaning machines in Germany for a long time, and Unicorp has been the authorised South African distributor for most of it. The range on this site is three machines, and choosing between them is less about cleaning performance — they all clean — than about two questions: how much volume, and what solvent you want to be running in ten years.
The three
iLine PERC is the entry-level machine. A real BÖWE at the accessible end of the range, and the right answer for a shop with steady residential work that does not need multi-solvent flexibility.
PremiumLine PERC is the full machine running perchloroethylene, with the flexibility and the control system the PremiumLine range is built around.
PremiumLine MULTISOLVENT is the same machine built to run chlorine-free class A III solvents — HC, GreenEarth, K4, Sensene, Intense and Higlo — selected through the ConfoTronic PL control rather than by mechanical conversion.
SlimLine or CrossLine
Both PremiumLine variants come in two layouts, and this is a floor-plan question rather than a performance one. M12, M15 and M18 can be had either way; M21, M26 and M30 are CrossLine only. If the room is awkward, send us the plan before you settle on a capacity — the layout sometimes decides the model.
The solvent question, honestly
Perc is effective, fast, and well understood by every operator in the trade. There is no South African ban on it and this article is not going to invent one.
What is true is that BÖWE's current range is not a perc range with alternatives added — the MULTISOLVENT line was designed around chlorine-free solvents, which is a decision the manufacturer made years ago about where the trade was heading. Three things follow for a buyer here:
- A single-solvent machine bought now is bought into a market that is narrowing, which shows up at resale and at year twelve when you need a part.
- Hotel groups, hospitals and corporate accounts increasingly carry their own environmental reporting and increasingly ask their suppliers about it. That arrives sooner than any regulation will.
- The premium on multi-solvent capability is paid once, at purchase. Converting or replacing early is not.
We have set that out at more length in perc alternatives and wet cleaning, including where wet cleaning fits and where it does not.
What we would ask you first
Daily volume, garment mix, the room, and whether you hold or want contract work. Those four settle the model far more reliably than a specification comparison does. See the whole dry cleaning machine range, or the BÖWE brand page for the wider line.