Wholesale energy savings for TransGourmet

TransGourmet is a European food wholesaler supplying fresh produce to leading food outlets. The wholesaler required a state-of-the-art lighting solution for its new 25,000²m warehouse facility in St Loubes, western France, to save energy and provide a high-quality working environment. Leading lighting solutions provider, Sylvania, specified its SylSmart intelligent lighting system for the facility.

TransGourmet’s new warehouse space will allow the business to grow and expand into the new space, with the long-term strategy for the business to maximise the space for the next 20 years. With a goal to provide a modern and efficient working space, the Sylvania system has the capacity to save up to 90% energy savings on previous systems.

“The benefits of a multitude of new technologies combined, including lighting, ergonomic workstations and security, ensure this facility is future-proof,” said Sebastien Diot, Director TransGourmet.

The solution selected by TransGourmet was one that utilised Sylvania LED fixtures with embedded SylSmart intelligence. There are over 1,200 fixtures throughout the warehouse, mounted at heights ranging from 2.5m to 15m.

Each of the fixtures contains a SylSmart intelligent sensor that wirelessly communicates with all the other fixtures. This provides a reliable, robust method of controlling the lighting to provide excellent occupancy comfort, whilst also delivering superb energy efficiency – leading to significant saving on utility expenditure. With the inbuilt capability of daylight sensing, natural light at the warehouse is considered by each fixture, and an appropriate light level is produced.

The sensors are embedded into the fixtures during manufacture and communicate wirelessly with other luminaires in the property. This ensures no additional cabling or installation work is needed, which significantly speeds up the installation process and helps to save the business expenses for down time in the warehouse.

The SylSmart system has a number of pre-set factory variables that work ‘out of the box’ as soon as power is connected. To complement this, the end user can specify levels of control over the system that suit their expertise or requirements. As the system is intelligent it allows on site changes to lighting behaviour to be implemented using a mobile App, or by connecting the lighting system to an existing BMS. These changes are easy to complete and designed to be carried out by non qualified lighting personnel, again saving money over having to employ third part contractors.

Sylsmart is a comprehensive lighting control system that delivers unrivalled occupancy comfort and assists businesses in complying with commercial property regulations.

Nicolas Boyer, Smart Solutions Manager from Sylvania, explains that with the embedded intelligent system, TransGourmet is “placing themselves in the lighting of tomorrow, today,” as they can now use the lighting infrastructure to not only provide light, but now look at energy management, space optimisation and location based services. “As an essential asset that could be funded through energy savings, the system now holds the promise of being able to deliver additional savings in terms of operation efficiency to the business.”

Financing options are also available for large-scale lighting upgrades, such as the TransGourmet warehouse. “If a business wishes to finance a lighting upgrade, Sylvania can facilitate this. We expect that the cost of the LED upgrade is easily covered by the reduction in energy spend, especially for commercial applications that have long running hours. The financing option provides an easy, risk free, capital free way of tapping into the huge potential advantages that a lighting upgrade can offer the warehouse sector,” comments Nicolas Boyer.

Sebastien Diot, Director TransGourmet concludes by stating: “By choosing a smart solution we have optimised our energy bill and improved the comfort of users of the warehouse.”

For more information visit www.sylvania-lighting.co.uk.