The Group offers leased facilities ranging from office warehouse units to bulk storage, retail and office buildings.

A purpose built facility recently completed for Cadbury New Zealand, with design by James Stuart Architectural, incorporated many energy efficient design elements to produce a warehousing complex that met the clients individual requirements with focus on an energy efficient and sustainable business operation.

Objective

With the building being a temperate controlled space the common use of translucent roofing to provide daytime illumination to the interior was not possible. The challenge was then put to James Stuart Architectural to come up with a solution to provide an energy efficient means of lighting the building that was in keeping with Cadbury’s overall sustainability and energy efficiency stance as a company. The solution also had to have minimal heat gain and heat loss.

Solution

James McCondach from James Stuart Architectural contacted Mike Cullen of HomeTech Solatube to look at what could be achieved with daylighting using the energy rated Solatube Daylighting System. A daylight design proposal based around providing illumination direct to the main racking aisles without negatively impacting on the interior operation was put in process. The Solatube 750 DS-OC Solamaster Daylighting System with a secondary roof dome for enhanced thermal performance was chosen.

The BMS in the warehouse provides control over the activation of the electric lights within the warehouse space ensuring that the benefits gained by daylight are optimised with electric lights off when not needed.

Products Used

72 x Solatube 750DS-OC Daylighting Systems with Prismatic Diffusers.

Testimonial

Francis Faalili, National Distribution Centre Manager, Cadbury:

"We have Solatube Daylighting Systems in our Cadbury National Distribution Centre, Mangere. It is used in conjunction with our standard electric lighting and Building Management system.

The Solatube Daylighting Systems mean we don’t have to run our electric lighting at 100%. We only need to run it at 66% for the picking area and 33% for the storage areas. The Solatube Daylighting Systems give off better light than our standard lights and, if we had more installed throughout the warehouse there would be no need to use the electirc lights between 6am and 6pm.

We are currently looking at installing more Solatube Daylighting Systems as this option is not only cost effective, but it fits in well with our sustainability plans."