The machine that won two awards: What DRYFT tells us about where professional floor cleaning is heading 

Every two years, the Amsterdam Innovation Awards provide a valuable indication of where the professional cleaning industry is heading, and not simply where the marketing says it is heading.

At the latest awards, perhaps the clearest signal came from one machine. DRYFT was named both the Overall Winner and winner of the Workforce & Ergonomics category, a rare double achievement. We spoke with the team behind it to understand what got them there, and what it says about the direction the rest of the sector is now being pulled in.

Five years in the making

"Winning both the Amsterdam Innovation Award Overall Winner and the Workforce & Ergonomics Category Award was an incredibly proud moment for the entire DRYFT team," they told us. Behind that moment sits five years of development from an in-house engineering team that spent as much time on how the machine moves as on how well it cleans, work that's since produced more than 14 patents.

This balance between cleaning performance and operator experience is central to DRYFT, and increasingly relevant to an industry facing labour shortages, rising productivity expectations and growing concern about workforce wellbeing.

The numbers worth paying attention to

DRYFT reduces walking by 75%, cleans in half the time, and delivers full floor coverage, all while moving through cluttered, obstacle-heavy spaces without needing them cleared first. That's a detail worth sitting with. Most equipment gets tested on open floors and struggles the moment real furniture, doorways and tight corners get involved.

The team calls their approach S-Motion, paired with 360-degree responsiveness designed for exactly those conditions. "DRYFT creates a faster and more comfortable cleaning experience through its super-fast S-Motion, lightweight design, responsive movement and ability to clean around obstacles without requiring spaces to be extensively rearranged," they explain. Less walking and less rearranging point in the same direction, toward less physical toll on whoever's running the machine, shift after shift.

British engineering attracting international interest

DRYFT is designed and manufactured in Sheffield, something that remains central to the brand’s identity.

“The recognition has raised awareness of DRYFT across new commercial audiences and international distribution networks,” the team says. “It has also strengthened our position as a British-designed and Sheffield-manufactured innovation, demonstrating that British engineering remains at the forefront of precision, performance and product design.”

The award has translated into commercial interest, with increased enquiries, demonstration requests and approaches from prospective distributors.

“We received interest from organisations looking to arrange demonstrations, explore distributor opportunities and introduce DRYFT into new markets,” they told us.

For many people, the Innovation Awards provided their first meaningful introduction to DRYFT and the problems it has been designed to solve.

A market rethinking traditional categories

Perhaps the most interesting shift is not purely commercial, but how people talk about the machine. According to the team, recognition has helped the industry start treating DRYFT "as a new category of professional floor-cleaning equipment, rather than simply another scrubber dryer."

That distinction is important. Buyers are beginning to assess equipment not only by what it does, but by how efficiently, comfortably and intuitively it enables people to work.  

A faster scrubber dryer is still a scrubber dryer. A machine designed from the outset around agility, accessibility and reduced operator strain may represent something different.

Where this leaves the industry

For DRYFT, what comes next is more markets, a growing distributor network, and continued investment in engineering. For the wider industry, this year's Innovation Awards are a signal worth noting. Ergonomics used to be treated as a nice-to-have layered onto performance. Increasingly, it's the performance question itself.

"The future belongs to intelligent, agile equipment that delivers exceptional cleaning performance while creating a faster, easier and more comfortable experience for the operator," the DRYFT team says. With two awards already making the case, whether the rest of the industry catches up is the only question left.

Interested in the innovations shaping the future of hygiene and facilities management? Explore more Amsterdam Innovation Awards winners