At the G.S. Dunn quality control and inspection facility in Hamilton, Ontario, light quality and accuracy is a primary concern to ensure the company’s dry mustard products meet its stringent standards.
The company was looking for ways to improve visibility and reduce energy consumption, prompting officials to look to its current high-wattage metal halide lighting system as a potential area for improvement.

Recently, the company replaced 18 of its 450W metal halide units with Dialight’s high-efficiency DuroSite ™ LED High Bay fixtures. As a result, G.S. Dunn gained superior color rendering and achieved significant cost and energy savings, a move that aligns with the company’s fiscal and sustainability goals.
 
“The new LED fixtures are encased in a sealed, lower profile unit with downward directional light that preserves light quality,” said Kevin Whyte, Operations Manager with G.S.Dunn. “And, the improvement in color rending is impressive. The Dialight fixtures produce a crisp, clear white light that improves visibility in our inspection area.”

G.S. Dunn has been a market leader in producing and supplying dry mustard products since 1867. The company has built a worldwide reputation for delivering the finest dry milled mustard products to some of the most notable names in the food industry. To ensure uncompromising quality, the company’s stringent quality inspection process requires adequate lighting for optimum visibility.

To achieve the visibility needed, the company had installed 18 powerful 450-watt fixtures in the inspection facility, with each actually consuming somewhere around 540 watts of energy to run the light and the ballast. Because of the light degradation over the life of the fixtures, ensuring optimum light quality for thorough product inspection was an ongoing challenge.

In addition to light quality issues, the powerful fixtures were expensive to operate and maintain. Not only were bulb changes a costly annual occurrence -- at $100 per hour in addition to the cost of the bulbs -- but the company had resorted to leaving the energy-sucking lights on 24 hours a day when a third shift was needed to meet production demands. With the metal halide’s slow warm-up period, leaving the lights on proved more operationally efficient than waiting around for the lights to warm up.
 
Facts about the Installation:

• 80 percent lumen maintenance after 60,000 hours: The company will save significantly on maintenance, bulb replacement and recycling/disposal of the old bulbs.

• Instant on/off: With instant on/off, the new Dialight fixtures eliminate the energy wasted in leaving the old metal halides burn just to avoid the warm-up. Some of the new fixtures have even been hooked up to motion sensors, further increasing their energy efficiency by cutting burn time to just nine hours per day versus 24.

• Significant energy savings: Operating at just 150W, the Dialight LED High Bay luminaires have slashed energy consumption and cost for the company, mitigating the costly ballast loss that pushes the 450W metal halide’s energy draw upwards of 540 total system watts.