Light at the end of the... warehouse!

• Bottling warehouse addresses its lighting problem with the help of expert advice
• New LED lamps offer better light at a lower cost and need replacing less often, which means less business disruption

Houston Bottling & Co-pack provides bottling and co-packing services to the Scotch whisky industry. From its bonded warehouses in Renfrew and Dumbarton, approximately one million cases of whisky are packed and exported worldwide each year. Customers include William Grant & Sons, MacDuff International, Chivas Bros, Tomatin Distillers and a wide range of craft distillers.

The company previously used a mixture of high-energy halogen and halide lamps to provide lighting for its warehouses. These lamps were inefficient, offered poor lighting levels and frequently wore out. This required warehouse staff to rig up a hoist and move stock to replace the bulbs, increasing downtime and reducing productivity. The company identified that upgrading to LEDs would significantly reduce energy costs, with a short payback period on investment. LEDs many advantages over incandescent lamps, including lower energy consumption, longer lifetime, smaller size and greater robustness.

Key benefits

Resource Efficient Scotland helped the company to implement this money saving project by providing access to the Scottish Government’s SME Loan Scheme, which offers businesses unsecured, interest-free loans from £ 1 000 (~€ 1 400) up to £ 100 000 (~€ 140 000) to make efficiency savings on energy, waste and water equipment. 

Resource Efficient Scotland’s advisors also provided free technical support, which included testing and measuring lighting options within the warehouse to make sure that the lights being trialled would be bright enough.