Founded in 1970, Pulsar has 45 years’ experience supporting and supplying lighting projects around the world.
We specialise in LED lighting where failure is highly visible, or difficult to access. This includes commercial warehouses, sports facilities, building facades, large-scale architectural projects and many other facilities.
The Pulsar teams designs and builds the most reliable and trusted LED lights on the market, building product at its own fully equipped manufacturing facility in Cambridge, UK. With a wealth of in-house industry knowledge and expertise in lighting and design, Pulsar works close with the customer to ensure their lighting needs are met.
WLN – WLN – As a leading supplier in the Lighting category, what has the last year been like for your business? How about for the rest of your sector?
The last year for Pulsar has been a very exciting one, demonstrating growth in new sectors. We have increased our sales teams substantially to cope with the demand for new products in our current EcoRange, and also the totally new Luxeos range. The UniBay in the EcoRange has put Pulsar at the top of the commercial warehouse sector, along with sports facilities and more. With the Luxeos range we have designed something really special, the investment across our entire product range has been massive.
WLN – What are your best-known products and services?
Pulsar’s industrial EcoRange products, designed in conjunction with our customers to save them money right from installation through to the long lifespan of the products. These are aimed at replacing the older less efficient highbays with reliable LED fixture, high lumen output with high CRI, optional dimming, an emergency light option, PIR detection, IP 54-66 rated, ECA compliant and customizable, followed by technical expertise, aftersales, delivery and our 5 year warranty.
In fact, unknown to us one customer was pressure washing our UniBay’s (remember they’re only IP 54 rated), daily for 8 months before they experienced any problems. We’re quite proud of that, and the customer now has an IP66 rated product in place. So when we say robust, we mean it.
We can proudly say that Pulsar’s ChromaRange was ground breaking, new and innovative within the lighting industry and a world first. With our 45- year heritage, customers know what Pulsar stands for – British designed and made, reliable and with the leading LED’s and control electronics.
WLN – What makes you the first choice supplier in your field?
We have a wealth of experience with installation, commissioning and integration, in many scenarios enabling us to be the one stop-shop for lighting and control, concept and completion. We put the customer first, and have several sites using our lights and the ‘best in class’ lights we’ve recommended from other suppliers where our solution isn’t optimum. We respect the hard work our customer’s go through to earn their profits, a small portion of which are spent on Pulsar LED lights.
We’ve also been around for 45 years, and so are comfortable offering a 10 year warranty. That’s a very different position to a new company with a year or two of experience, and you want comfort they’ll be there to back up their guarantee.
With our longevity in trading you can be sure we know what we are doing with product design, creating products to last, making them durable and robust, and our flexible adaption of product to suit the clients’ requirements.
WLN – What changes have you made to your core offering in the last year?
The UniBay itself has been re-designed from its predecessor to reduce weight, increase efficiency and introduce even faster and easier mounting with options to suit many different applications.
The introduction of different beam angles for UniBay, one option is having a narrow beam angle for aisle lighting so you reach the floor and not waste/spill light where it’s not required, but also glare control which we have found to be a must in certain sectors especially sports facilities.
Pulsar have also upgraded their flagship ChromaRange with the intention of ensuring the latest components and designs are used to keep up with the market sector. This is no mean feat due to technologies changing so frequently and everyone wanting the latest and best LED or electronics.
WLN – What new products and services have you introduced?
We launched UniBay, a highbay from our Eco Range, a highly efficient energy saving fixture utilising high power COB technology at only 130W and achieving an efficacy of 120+ Lm/W.
This is a superb replacement for Metal Halide fittings because of its high efficacy and minimal maintenance.
This product is formidably versatile due to the different mounting options, which include LBrackets, low profile bracket, adjustable tilt options and a dual head fixing. It’s designed to ensure you get the light where you actually need it, not spilling out sideways at roof level or creating pools of light and shadow on the floor.
WLN – What industries are your customers in?
Our industrial customers range from warehousing, logistics, aviation hangars, sports facilities and local authorities. We have also lit one of the largest indoor buildings in the UK, where the airships were built. In that environment, the UniBay is providing light from a 50 metre ceiling height. Our architectural customers are worldwide and their lighting requirements are large international architectural projects, retail, hotels and many other industries.
WLN – How do your products and services help customers become more efficient, greener or work safer?
Helping our customers to become more energy efficient and save money immediately is one of our primary objectives. We have seen our customers dramatically reduce the energy they use, lower their carbon footprint, and some reduce their running costs by up to 80% per year. This allows a 100% return on investment in less than 24 months from installation date. It’s great visiting a customer a few months after installation and seeing how excited they are about their much smaller energy bill.
Imagine looking forward to your energy bill! We also work with our customers to ensure that they are getting the most from available control equipment, and natural light.
One important feature of all of our products is a completely flicker free design (i.e. no Pulse Width Modulation, PWM). This has important safety implications regarding industrial work, particularly with spinning blades. We have also had feedback from other customers who have commented on how the light appears more comfortable.
Reducing maintenance time and costs help our customers to become more efficient. Recycling is also important, we can recycle 98% of our UniBay and eliminate the need to dispose of lamps containing harmful substances such as mercury.
WLN – Can you tell us about some of your customers and the work you do for them?
We have a wide customer base from lighting consultants, Sports Tennis association, Whitefurze UK, Alliance Online and many more.
Our customers also consist of small one off projects, facility managers and building owners.
We would perform a free lighting design survey, designing the install using advanced computer software to maximise the use of our products, improving the light output and the light quality. This would include an energy savings report, showing in detail your past and present carbon footprint and energy savings as well as money saved. We are proud to give a complete solution from the design process through to the installation and beyond.
WLN – Is there a recent or current project that stands out as a showcase for your company? Can you tell us about it?
We have had a few great installations this year from tennis centre’s to churches, and two spring to mind. The first on our Industrial side was Diamond Hangar at Standsted Airport, a major project, which required high light levels all year round. This project had 192 UniBay products to replace the exciting 384 high-pressure sodium fittings. Thanks to our expertise in optics and light shaping, we were able to provide an 85% energy saving, which is over £64,000 per year in running costs, cash which stays in our customer’s pocket. Additionally, the illuminance at ground level is now nearly three times higher and the light is much better (higher CRI), critical for aircraft maintenance work.
The second was on our architectural side, BiSB – an external building façade in the Kingdom of Bahrain. This comprised of more than 600 Pulsar ChromaRange products around various areas of the building.
WLN – What were your company’s biggest achievements in the last 12 months?
It would have to be our 100,000 hours real world install! Back in 2003 we installed Pulsar LED lighting on the front of our building, confident in its reliability, longevity, and durability. Twelve ChromaPanels were installed on the South-facing front of the factory building in May 2003 and have been running 24/7 ever since.
It was October 2014 when we passed this milestone the first time, which is a subtle hint to watch this space; 100,000 hours equals an impressive 11 years 5 months and the lights are still going strong.
Braving all that the Great British weather has to throw at them, the fixtures have endured some of the wettest and hottest years in recent history as well as snow, ice, hail, fog, wind, and all weather in between for the past decade.
“This is a real milestone for us at Pulsar,” explained Pulsar’s CEO Brian Pohl. “It’s a real testament to our design and manufacturing teams’ guiding principles: quality, durability and reliability. We’re also proud to refer to an installation with over 100,000 hours when our customers ask about Pulsar’s product lifetime.
As far as we’re aware there aren’t any other LED installations even close to this record.”
Being able to say we have been around since 1970 and that our factory lighting installation has been running without issue for 100,000 hours is really important to our customers – especially those who may have been exposed to lower quality equipment in the past which needed replacing within months.
The last thing you need when you’re operating a factory, busy warehouse or hectic logistics facility is endure the hassle of taking lights down soon after installation – and obviously we’re very happy to report we have some extremely satisfied customers in really quite challenging climates.
WLN – Are you currently investing in the business, taking on staff or going into new markets or countries? If so, how’s it going?
Yes. Pulsar is majority owned by its employees. We have a pipeline of new products along with a growing sales team. We’re excited and enjoy the wins along with the hard work, which comes with a fast growing company.
WLN – What are you doing to bring on new talent and raise skills levels in your company?
We are constantly investing in people and product development. We have introduced training plans and as we grow have increased opportunities for employees to develop in new roles. This creates outstanding opportunities for graduates to begin their career at Pulsar, where they’ll have a lot more exposure and responsibility early on.
Our facility in Cambridge, UK is unique in that we design and manufacture all of our products in house. This can be an expensive but rewarding practice as we ensure quality that you expect from a British manufacturer is met.
WLN -What are the major issues facing the Lighting category as we go forward? How is your company addressing them?
One of our hardest jobs, as a very high quality lighting and control manufacturer is educating customers about the hidden costs in poorly manufactured product. It’s a true ‘cash out of pocket’ cost to replace failed lights (labour, access equipment hire, etc.).
Once a customer has been burnt by over-sold or poor quality products, it’s very easy convincing them to select high quality LED lighting. The problem is the “cheap and cheerful” suppliers don’t offer refunds!
We address this by education and more education. We educate our customers about LEDs in general so they can invest profitably LED lighting for their application, regardless of selecting Pulsar’s products.
Also, our industry is constantly changing and evolving, which means certain challenges come up from time to time. Making sure that we comply with environmental and industrial regulations is very important, as is keeping up to date on research, such as the research currently being carried out into the effect of blue light on circadian rhythm, and keeping on top of the continuous developments and improvements of LEDs.
WLN – Will you be exhibiting at any major trade shows in the coming year?
Yes, Pulsar will be exhibiting at Pro Light&Sound as well as Light&Building in Frankfurt in 2016. You will generally find Pulsar at other shows in the UK, including Plasa North and Multimodal. We are also well represented globally by our partners and value added resellers.
WLN – What other big news from Pulsar Light of Cambridge can our readers look forward to reading in Warehouse & Logistics News in 2016?
Pulsar’s brand of products will continue to grow, and we expect to see large-scale development in software for industrial lighting, like zigbee and DALI.
We are also set to expand the Luxeos family, including various floods and linear size options with quad core technologies.
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