Heinemann which is the 5th largest duty free operator in the world won the 7 & ½ year contract for Sydney’s T1 departures. As part of the tender there was to be a full upgrade of all facilities surrounding the duty free area which included the security check in. Part of this was lighting the main thorough fare of the departures gates. The challenge for the lighting designers (Aurecon) was to provide a highly functional space for security but also to maintain an upmarket ambience to entice shoppers to spend more time in the area. The architect had provided black troughs in the ceiling to hide the light sources away for a glare-free environment which was achieved by using the superior ERCO lens technology so there was no spill light on the edges of the troughs and great optical cut-off.

As the airport is functioning 24 hours a day, 7 days a week the chosen luminaires had to have a high quality technical specification. The selected ERCO 28W Skim achieves an excellent maintenance factor of L90/B10 at 50,000 hours, a failure rate of less than 0.1% at 50,000 hours and a colour deviation of <2SDCM.