March Foods, a United Kingdom based food warehouse system, spent a few years looking for ways to reduce energy in its warehouses. Paul Cope, Managing Director of March Foods, had a few issues with the current lighting in his 35,000 square-foot warehouse he was looking to solve with new lighting. He had 84 450-watt high pressure sodium lamps in the warehouse that operated 24 hours per day, six days per week. Cope also said the workers aren’t in every area of the warehouse all the time, but if he shuts the warehouse lights off, they’d take 10-15 minutes to come back on. The HPS lighting hung 4-5 feet off of their 15-foot ceilings, which were in the way of extended pallet trucks, and the height of the lamps made them impossible to replace without a cherry picker. The company used to wait until 4-8 lamps burned out so they could rent a cherry picker for the weekend to replace them, which cost the company over $2,700 annually.

Paul Cope’s solution? LED lighting! March Foods replaced every HPS lamp with a 150-watt LED lamp, which are 66% more energy efficient than the HPS lamps. The instant-on feature of LEDs saved the food warehouse company another 72% on energy and reduced carbon emissions by approximately 98 tons annually. Tom Klimes of Interior Control Ltd. sold Cope the lamps and said the lamps come with a five-year warranty, but could last more than 10 years if they aren’t used 24-7. The LEDs also only hang two feet from the ceiling as opposed to four or five feet, so they are less likely to be hit by pallet trucks. Cope also plans to see a return on his investment in less than three years, but it may be six months sooner than projected once electricity prices are taken into account.

Even the workers approve of the new lighting. Cope said the HPS lamps were dim and looked “old,” and he was ready for something new. “One of them [March Foods workers] even says that now he feels noticeably less tired at the end of a night shift,” said Klimes. The energy and cost savings are endless with LEDs! Retrofit your warehouse today!