The move has been a welcome step forward for the company’s 50+ staff which, after 10 years of steady growth, had found themselves bursting out the seams of three separate premises across two industrial areas - with all the inevitable inefficiencies that the situation gave rise to. The meticulously-planned move to the new premises has now given AC Lighting the infrastructure it needs to both operate efficiently at its current size, and to cater for its certain future growth.
Extensive refurbishment of the new premises has increased the available floorspace by over 40% to 37,000sq.ft (3,437sq.m). The construction project, which lasted five months, added two floors of office accommodation, dedicated manufacturing facilities for the production of cables and colour scrolls, a new service centre and substantial warehousing. The building also includes a new demonstration facility with a 6m ceiling height, adjacent training rooms and a reception area.
The extensive warehouse facilities have been fitted with high bay and pallet racking to maximize storage capacity and to offer greater efficiency in handling of materials. Cable drum storage racking has been installed, with capacity for up to 60 large cable drums of up to 800kg each. Spacious goods in, packing and shipping areas have also been provided. For communications, a new IT infrastructure and telephone system has been installed, requiring the installation of 10km of twisted-pair cabling and a high-speed digital link to the company’s Northern regional sales office in Leeds.
Marketing director Glyn O’Donoghue gave L&SI a tour of the new premises, beginning with the newly-created and spacious office areas - where several recently-appointed staff members were already ensconced - through to the extensive warehousing which holds around £3m worth of stock, including everything from the smallest accessory to sophisticated moving lights and control systems.
The Scroll Express manufacturing area covers 155sq.m and houses three custom-made vacuum benches on which colour filter can quickly and accurately be positioned, cut and assembled into scrolls for any type of colour changer from any manufacturer. The Cable Express manufacturing facility, meanwhile, produces standard and custom-made power and control cables, and pre-wired lighting bars. These can then be terminated with a wide choice of industry standard connectors for any requirement. Using automated cutting and coiling machiners, the company can also supply cut cable to customer specifications.
In the service and repair centre, manned by AC’s factory trained technicians, there are facilities for everything from simple, regular maintenance tasks through to major repairs of lighting consoles and moving lights. The tour even stretched down to the building’s ‘nerve centre’, domain of IT and logistics director Mark Tonks, who has overseen the extensive communications and IT installation.
The new headquarters has been named ‘Centauri House’ - a reference to the distant roots of the company, which was started some time in the early 1970s by David Leggett and Richard Floyd, as ‘Alpha Centauri Lighting’, specialising in psychedelic lightshows. Later, expansion into stage lighting, with the emphasis on rental and production, led to work with some of the leading rock acts of the day, including AC/DC, UFO and Status Quo. The pair later began trading in lighting consumables and accessories, and incorporated AC Lighting in 1982. Today, the company is acknowledged as one of the largest European distributors of professional lighting and associated eq
