Our History

On 1st February 1975 KL Quilts was founded by Mr Keith Leary, originally selling high quality linen to laundries. It was started from a friends garage in Mount Pleasant road, Exeter! He set himself to go out selling, with the goods in the boot of his Grenada, and not return home until he had sold something every day.

By 1985, the company had renamed to Commercial Linen Supplies and was located in Church Street, Heavitree, Exeter. By now Mr Keith had purchased his first van: a gas powered VW LT.

After a steady growth supplying hotels, holiday camp sites, bed and breakfast establishments and laundries, Commercial Linen Supplies moved into the nursing home market supplying from domiciliary care providers to day care centres and private hospitals to supported & assisted living groups. It was in this period that we relocated nearby to our current location at the end of Cofton Road, Marsh Barton.

By now we were now in our fourth location where we are to this day. At Devonshire House, Cofton Road. We started to call ourselves and become known as CLH.

In November 2010 a company based in Somerset called Quantock Healthcare Supplies was acquired who supplied many nursing & residential care homes and after an initial transitional period the hard decision was made to close the Bridgwater office and run all operations from Exeter with no detriment to deliveries across the whole of the South West. This is still now being handled by our friendly team of staff in the Devon office.

Fast forward to November 2014 and the disposables section of Medaco from Bristol was purchased which further added to our product range, portfolio of clients and market share meaning the ability to offer even greater service and group buying which customers alike could benefit from.

Then on the 1st of May 2016, the partnership incorporated to CLH Group Ltd although we are still known as CLH Healthcare.

We added a new warehouse building in 2017 to further expand the range of products we stock to ensure good availability for our customers. In March 2018, we hosted our #CLHExpo2018 at Sandy Park in Exeter. Of course this brought a year we will never forget - the Coronavirus Pandemic - during which, as an essential service, we were so busy and emptied our warehouse astoundingly quickly!

We hosted our very first Company Day which saw the entire team come together to focus on the bigger picture. This brought about a greater cohesion and focus within the team that will help us to deliver on our purpose - to make lives easier for the carers of the elderly!