The big Sainsbury's LED lighting rollout

Sainsbury's has begun a massive nationwide rollout of LED lighting in hundreds of shops. The supermarket chain aims to eventually make all its stores 100% LED, reducing its energy bill for lighting by more than half. Lux reports exclusively on the project and meets the team behind it. Sainsbury’s was an early adopter of LED lighting. The supermarket giant has been looking into LED technology for about seven years, first for refrigerator lighting, and later feature lighting and car parks. Over time, as the technology got more powerful, it spread to more applications. Last year marked a milestone. Sainsbury’s opened the doors of its first all-LED store – a brand new hypermarket in Leek, Staffordshire, which consumes about 60 per cent less energy for lighting than comparable stores (with the same nice even illumination) thanks the GE ‘Blade’ fitting. But that was just one shop. Now, the use of high-tech low-energy lighting at Sainsbury’s is no longer the exception, it is the norm. As of this year, all new lighting is LED by default. The retailer’s sustainability boss Paul Crewe says energy-efficient lighting is ‘one of the most important technologies that we have introduced over the last three years’. All the major supermarkets have been dabbling in LED lighting technology, but the scale of the Sainsbury’s rollout – and the sheer amount of attention that the retailer pays to lighting – positions it in front of its rivals.