Editor’s Picks — Best Appliances of 2014

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Speed Queen Laundry Range (RRPs vary)

After a brief hiatus, the famous Speed Queen laundry brand returned to retail in 2014 with a range of commercial grade washers and dryers for the most discerning and demanding customers.

Speed Special: Speed Queen was honoured with the Women’s Choice Award as the Most Preferred Washing Machine brand in the United States.

From Andrew Barton Laundry overcomes stormy weather to relaunch Speed Queen to retail:

Andrew Barton Laundry has been around since the early 1950s. Following the post-War patriotic fashion of the day, it was named not for its owner but for a celebrated and recently deceased Australian: Andrew Barton “Banjo” Paterson. That the nation was celebrating Banjo’s 150th birthday in the same week as this celebration was a point noted by the attending guests.

Described by colleagues as a “visionary”, Braavedt immigrated to Australia in mid-1980s after becoming disillusioned with life in Apartheid South Africa. An adventurous man by nature, the walls of Braavedt’s office are adorned with model planes he has flown and black and white portraits of him yachting and hunting; his desk is made from the wing of a plane he once piloted.

Braavedt has been the managing director of Andrew Barton Laundry since 2002. When he joined, the company was “needing some repairs”, he said, but within five years commercial sales were booming and within 10 years, this antediluvian period had registered three times as many sales as the previous years combined.