Kärcher Blog International

After the hearing in Stuttgart regional court on 19 April, the German press agency dpa published the following report:

Cleaning dispute: Partial victory for Kärcher

Stuttgart (dpa/lsw) – Cleaning giant Kärcher has won a partial victory in the bizarre lawsuit against US rival Tennant. At a hearing on Friday in the Stuttgart regional court, an expert witness essentially contradicted Tennant’s claims about the functioning of its machines. However, the expert testimony referred only to individual modules. The court did not rule out the possibility of a further test of the entire range. A Kärcher spokesman said he was very satisfied. “We see this as a decisive step,” he said. The opposing party declined to comment on the ongoing proceedings.

According to previous information, Tennant had claimed that its scrubber-driers – which are used to clean school corridors or station platforms, for example – use electricity to activate water, thereby converting it into a kind of cleaning agent that renders chemicals superfluous. Kärcher considers this claim misleading and filed a suit against its rival.

The second oral hearing in the dispute between Kärcher and Tennant will be held at the Stuttgart District Court on Friday, 19 April, starting at 10.45 a.m. The court will be dealing with the report that it commissioned from an independent expert. The point at issue is whether water “activated” by Tennant’s so-called ec-H2O technology cleans better or worse than ordinary tap water when used in scrubber driers.

“Tennant’s so-called ec-H2O technology can achieve no better cleaning results in scrubber-driers than by using ordinary tap water,” Kärcher stated in a blog and in the suit it filed against its competitor before the Stuttgart District Court. After Tennant instituted legal proceedings against this statement, the Court’s 31st chamber for commercial matters today announced that the technology is to be investigated by a court-appointed expert.

“We welcome this ruling by the Stuttgart District Court unreservedly,” said Markus Asch, Deputy Chairman of the Kärcher Group’s Management Board. “The ec-H2O technology that Tennant advertises is now to be put to the scientific test by a court-appointed expert. That tallies with the approach that we have pursued since the start of the proceedings.”

”The ad must not appear again in its current form” is the ruling of the British Advertising Standards Authority [1]) on an advertising claim regarding the “ec-H2O“ technology used in scrubber dryers of the cleaning equipment manufacturer Tennant in the United Kingdom. According to the ASA decision, the company must no longer claim that this technology cleans better compared to traditional cleaning chemicals and methods. One of the reasons that Tennant had given in support of the better cleaning result was that using ec-H2O more bacteria had been proven to be removed than with detergents. As no robust evidence on the point was presented, this advertising message was misleading. Therefore Tennant breaches several elements of the ASA Code of Practice.

“We are happy with this ruling of the ASA,“ says Markus Asch, Deputy Chairman of the Board of Management of the Kärcher Group. “Following the recommendation of the National Advertising Division (NAD) of the respected American Advertising Self-Regulatory Council, Tennant has now also been prohibited by the ASA from disseminating one of its advertising messages. Kärcher is willing to accept in principle that a cleaning process free from chemicals has a lower environmental impact and saves costs, as all scrubber dryers are after all able to achieve satisfactory results even without detergents in the case of light soiling. Just like tap water, ‘ec-H2O’ reaches its limits when tackling very stubborn dirt,” continues Markus Asch.

Those who wish to form their own opinion of the ASA reasoning can access the original comments on the organisation’s website (www.asa.org.uk) Tennant has been given until 14 June to submit a request for the review of the ASA recommendation.

InGermany, an initial court decision is due at the end of June, when the Regional Court of Stuttgart will announce its decision in the case Kärcher versus Tennant.

The ruling date for the Tennant case, originally scheduled for 27 April, has been postponed. The Stuttgart District Court announced today that the ruling will be given at 14:00 pm on 29 June 2012.

In the United States the National Advertising Division (NAD) of the Council of Better Business Bureau has investigated a number of advertising claims made by the Tennant Company relating to its ec-H2O technology. The NAD is responsible for reviewing national advertising for truthfulness and accuracy and is in place to foster public confidence in the credibility of advertising.

The NAD’s investigation found that Tennant’s claims could not to be adequately borne out by the tests that they presented. They include, especially, the Tennant slogans:

-       ecH2O electronically converts water into a superior cleaning solution

and

-       ecH2O outperforms [many] conventional chemicals

The NAD also welcomed the fact that the Tennant Company is no longer using the slogan:

-       ecH2O technology makes water perform like a powerful detergent.

The cleaning equipment manufacturer Nilfisk-Advance submitted Tennant’s advertising claims to the NAD. Nilfisk-Advance reported on the NAD’s findings in a Press release.

Kärcher too is currently engaged in legal proceedings against Tennant’s British and German subsidiaries in connection with similar advertising claims for the ec-H2O technology and has taken its case to the UK Advertising Standards Authority and the Stuttgart District Court.

Link to NAD Press release

Link to Nilfisk-Advance Press release

Since 1996 MicroMol GmbH has worked – and continues to work – on a number of complex issues relating to the development, evaluation and validation of cleaning agents and disinfectants and cleaning and disinfection processes. In biological systems especially the use of tensides and a knowledge of their chemistry is very widespread and important. MicroMol GmbH is also accredited by the German Accreditation Agency (DAkkS) for a number of test procedures. MicroMol’s Dr. Andreas Dreusch is an auditor appointed by the German Accreditation Agency for the areas of biology and chemistry and therefore inspects other laboratories or public bodies to ensure that their work complies with the standards.

Dr. Dreusch, you can clean quite well using water alone, can’t you?

You can clean very well with normal tap water. However, water is no good for fatty dirt. And that is increasingly widespread. A carton of milk bursts in the supermarket, a sandwich is dropped at a fast-food outlet, in a shopping mall for example, factories have oil and grease stains from machines, and soot. And fat particles are present everywhere where there are a lot of people, such as schools, kindergartens or hospitals.

In other words, to get a surface contaminated with fat or oil really clean, you need to add cleaning agents?

Of course, you can also strengthen the mechanical component when cleaning, by brushing harder or longer. Or you can try to clean with hot water. That won’t work particularly well, but it will make the floor surface look clean. However, in many cases hygienic, reliable cleaning is only possible with the use of cleaning agents that dissolve fats so that they are picked up rather than being spread evenly across the floor.

How clean do scrubber-driers that use ec-H2O technology really clean?

We have examined this technology thoroughly in our laboratory and found that it is possible to achieve good results with these machines. However, the results are just as good as those achieved using normal water. In the case of fatty, that is water-repellent, dirt, we were able to prove clearly that particles are distributed, but not dissolved or removed. The cleaning result was definitely worse than that of machines that use cleaning agents.

http://www.micromol.com

Today was the first day of hearings at the Stuttgart District Court in the legal dispute between Kärcher and Tennant. Tennant has until March 13 to submit a further opinion to the Chamber for Commercial Affairs, and Kärcher has until April 3 to submit a response. The Court is due to issue its ruling on April 27.

“In the oral proceedings we reiterated our view of the matter clearly and precisely, and it was evident that the Court had familiarised itself very well with the facts of the case. So we look forward in confidence to the pronouncement of judgment at the end of April,” said Markus Asch, Managing Director Professional Products and Deputy Chairman of the Alfred Kärcher GmbH & Co. KG management.

Tennant has withdrawn in Germany a wrongly translated Press release in which it claimed incorrectly that an agency responsible for dealing with anti-competitive advertising in the UK– Oxfordshire County Council’s Trading Standards Service – considered scientific proof to have been provided of the efficacy of ec-H2O technology.

In fact, the agency had merely stated that it was not pursuing the complaint further because its expertise was mainly legal and it did not have detailed knowledge about every product that was available on the market. The Trading Standards Service merely observed that Tennant had submitted evidence in support of its dubious advertising claims, but that it – the TSS – was unable to check the accuracy of the evidence. Accordingly, Tennant continues to have failed to provide scientific proof of the efficacy of the so-called ec-H2O technology.

Tennant GmbH & Co. KG has applied to the Regional Court in Stuttgart for a further extension of the deadline for the statement of defence to 7 December 2011. The request was granted.

The reason given by Tennant for this request for an extension of the deadline is that expert opinion was currently being compiled by the Fraunhofer Institute for Interfacial Engineering and Biotechnology (IGB). The subject under examination was the effectiveness of the ec-H2O technology.

Till now, Tennant had publicly maintained that the effectiveness of the so-called ec-H2O technology had already some time ago been substantiated by several studies.