Based on the Energy Committee review, in August 2008 McBurney installed 69 Saturn 72 LED lights designed to operate 24 hours, 7 days a week. The results in February 2021 – a total of 12 years, 6 months later – the LED lights continue to operate efficiently.
The McBurney Transport group was founded in 1965 in Ballymena, Ireland by Norman McBurney OBE. The company has become one of Ireland’s largest independently run logistics operations, offering a wide range of transportation and warehousing services tailored to meet each of their customer’s needs throughout Great Britain, the Republic of Ireland and Europe. Part of its portfolio includes McBurney Refrigeration Ltd which offers 22,500 frozen pallet spaces and 5,000 chilled/ambient pallet spaces.
In 2007 McBurney Refrigeration Ltd set up an Energy Committee to review its power consumption and find ways to reduce its carbon footprint. An obvious target was its warehouse lighting, which relied on 500W SON flood lighting. These were mounted 14 meters high, and including high energy use, they also generated heat – problematic as the warehouse is a cold store running at -22°C. To make the situation more complex, the SON lights could not be switched off due to their high failure rate if allowed to cool and heat up again.
Constellation Lighting surveyed the warehouse and suggested replacing the 500W SON flood lights with 90W Saturn 72 LED high bay lights on a one for one basis. McBurney Refrigeration agreed to a trial of 10 LED lights, sufficient to cover three aisles of one chamber. The trial was a total success, and in March 2008 another 60 lights were ordered to complete the chamber. Once McBurney were able to build up a picture of the cost savings – based on reduction in energy units used since the lights were installed – they ordered another 60 LEDs from Constellation to convert the lighting their next cold store chamber.
Based on the Energy Committee review, in August 2008 McBurney installed 69 Saturn 72 LED lights designed to operate 24 hours, 7 days a week. The results in February 2021 – a total of 12 years, 6 months and 109,500 hours later – the LED lights continue to operate efficiently.
In 2011, based on a successful first project with Constellation, McBurney ordered a further 114 Saturn 72 LED lights to replace 500W metal halide lights in one of their newer large chambers – demonstrating McBurney’s confidence in both Constellation and their LED technology.
McBurney have enjoy several benefits by switching to LED lighting:
• Cost reduction from lower energy consumption (500W down to 90W)
• Cost reduction by switching low heat LED technology
• Energy savings from ability to switch off cold store lights
• Zero maintenance costs from reliable LED lights
• Improved working conditions from low energy, high illumination LEDs
• Reduced carbon footprint.
