A Coventry company has completed its largest ever order — totalling £1 million — to supply energy-saving lights to the Royal Navy.
Canley-based Voltacon (
www.voltacon.com) has provided 100,783 tubes of LED lighting for 21 ships, including the new aircraft Carriers HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales.
Around 100 staff worked round-the-clock for 45 days to manufacture the lights at Voltacon’s factory in China to process the order in record time.
The lights were then transported to Portsmouth naval base in batches of 8,000-10,000 to be installed by 40 BAE Systems electricians.
Stefanos Kandilidis, Voltacon’s managing director, said the Royal Navy had tested around 3,000 pieces of LED lighting before going ahead with the order.
He said: “This is one of our biggest ever orders and probably the largest offshore lighting contract in the world. We had been in discussions with the Ministry of Defence for three years, and they had tested our lights for three years on the ships before the refurbishment work began.
T"he ships were previously fitted with fluorescent lights, but there are many benefits in changing to LED lighting. It reduces costs, the maintenance load and the need for storage space.”
Mr Kandilidis said that the lights are now being installed on an ‘opportunity’ basis when the ships are in dock, so it may be 12 months before they are all fully fitted.
“We are really proud to have our lights installed on the Royal Navy’s fleet.”