A recent conversion to LED lighting at Dole Food Co.’s mammoth salad-packaging plant in Bessemer City, NC, provided workers for the world’s largest producer and marketer of fresh fruit and vegetables with better lighting to improve employee safety and energy efficiency. The retrofit project doubled illumination on the plant floor while cutting lighting energy consumption in half.
The two-year project converted most of Dole’s 285,000-square-foot site from incandescent lighting to brighter and safer LEDs from LEDtronics, Torrance, CA. The 11-year old plant ships roughly 750,000 packages of salad greens per day to consumers in the southern and eastern United States.
The pilot launched with initial test samples in August 2016. The project, overseen by plant engineer Mike Long, called for an order of 365 LEDtronics retrofit kits and 105 New HBL005 High Bay fixtures, along with 28 wallpacks and 30 thin ceiling panels. The lighting was supplied by LEDtronics distributor Vallen Distribution, based in Belmont, NC, just 16 miles away.
The fruits of this labor at the 11-year-old plant include a healthier, more productive and energy-efficient production facility and warehouse, as well as cost savings inherent to LED technology.
“This was the first installation of LED technology for Dole, and the results are fantastic,” said Chris Houser, maintenance supervisor at the Dole Fresh Vegetables plant. “We now have a much brighter and safer environment in the warehouse and production areas. That’s on top of the cost savings with converting to LED lighting.”
The lighting systems’ ease of installation further simplified the process and kept costs down, Houser said. The plant’s in-house crew was able to handle the installation.
“We were able to perform our own installation because it was a fairly straightforward process,” Houser said. As a result Dole will continue its lighting retrofits throughout the rest of the plant.