Our Customer
Food retailer Sainsbury's operates over 1,000 stores across the UK, including 440 convenience stores and employs around 150,000 people. The carbon step change programme forms part of Sainsbury's 20x20 Sustainability Plan, an industry-leading plan that is the cornerstone of Sainsbury's business strategy and sets out 20 targets to be achieved by 2020. To help achieve this, Sainsbury's has partnered with GE Lighting to install the latest LED energy efficient lighting solutions.

GE's Lumination™ Linear Suspended is an LED luminaire unlike any other, a ground-breaking design that changes the face of retail lighting.

The first project of its kind, the new Sainsbury's store on Churnet Way, in Leek, Staffordshire is a 40,000sq ft store with a wide range of popular Sainsbury's food products and a selection of general merchandise items. The store, which was built with a number of other energy efficiency initiatives, opened its doors on the 16th January 2013.

The expectation

"To find a lighting solution that won't compromise our customers' shopping experience yet can help reduce our environmental impact also providing operating cost savings is key to us achieving our stretching carbon reduction target." - Paul Crewe, Sainsbury's Head of Sustainability.

The store is targeted to achieve a 59% reduction in energy required for lighting or 180 tonnes CO2eq pa, with overall environmental targets set for the store (2012/13 vs. 2005/06) of a 55% reduction in carbon emissions and 50% reduction in kWh gas and electricity usage.

The solution

To meet these requirements, GE Lighting proposed to install edgelit luminaires with its latest LED technology innovation, and Sainsbury's also became the first supermarket using GE's Lumination™ Linear Suspended luminaires with Intrinsix™ Optical technology.

Lumination™ Linear Suspended delivers its bright, uniform white light both vertically, to the floor, for welcoming, brightly lit aisles, and horizontally, ensuring attractive shadow-free shelves and maximum product appeal.

Perfect for aisle or gondola lighting, Lumination™ Linear Suspended is a thin and uniform illuminated lighting panel suspending from the ceiling, powered with Intrinsix™ Optical technology to maximise the performance, control and efficiency of the LEDs within the fixture. When turned on, it produces a perfectly even glow, and while off, it is nearly transparent with the LEDs hidden inside the frame. The double asymmetric distribution provides glare free, vertical and horizontal illuminance directing light evenly onto the shelves and the floor. Lumination™ 1200x300 Suspended and 600x600 Recessed luminaires were installed across the restaurant, bakery and office areas of the store. These luminaires provide superior substitution to LFL technology with better light quality, significant energy & maintenance savings and a generally improved look & feel.

Luminaiton™ Linear Suspended looks more aesthetic than traditional LFL retail lighting fixtures.

In a retail environment the ability to accentuate areas or products of interest is key and this means punching through the ambient light with high impact accent lighting - the GE Infusion™ LED module provides the impact and versatility to do just that. As a sustainable alternative to HID technology, GE Infusion™ Downlights and Track Spots utilising GE Infusion™ LED modules were installed for ambient and accent lighting. These high performing, interchangeable, future-proof modular LED modules deliver around 4x the illuminance of typical retail ambient lighting, providing the power to create dramatic effect in the retail stores.

GE Infusion™ Downlight makes perfect match with the Lumination™ family

For the outdoor car park and petrol filling station GE's LED Area Lighter offers uniform white light, with the Area Lighter's modular optical ring design producing superior vertical luminance, efficiently delivering the required amount of light without wasteful or irritating light spill into neighbouring areas.

The GE LED Area Lighter is perfect for site, area and general lighting.

Results and benefits

Sainsbury's worked with GE Lighting to create a scheme that utilises multiple LED lighting solutions to maximise energy savings, lower carbon emissions and extend maintenance cycles, but at the same time enhance the shopping experience for Sainsbury's customers.

With GE Lighting's LED solutions Sainsbury's achieved the 59% energy reduction target. The contemporary design of the fixtures added to the design ideals of the store and the uniform light improved the interior environment creating a better shopping experience – whilst outdoors, the solution provides enhanced lighting in the car park, with visual perception sharpened.

"Together with GE we're delighted to be announcing another world-first supermarket installation of a highly innovative technology for our stores," said Paul Crewe, Sainsbury's Head of Sustainability. "We trialed the first installation of the new LED lighting in one of our local convenience stores in Scotland late last year and the initial findings were so positive that we decided to install it in our new Leek supermarket. We are confident that it will deliver an enhanced shopping experience as well as significant energy savings, helping us getting a big step closer to our sustainability commitment." Mike Barrett, General Manager at GE Lighting, said: "Sainsbury's is again leading the drive for carbon reduction. Its supermarket in Leek demonstrates how LED can be leveraged to optimise energy and maintenance savings at no cost to the customer experience. Coming from a company with strong culture of quality and testing, GE Lighting's LED range for the retail environment offers long-lasting performance in terms of energy savings and durability – and future-proofed versatility."