Avant Compact Loaders are Made Under Purso Lights

Avant Tecno Oy is a manufacturer of the most multi-functional compact loaders in the world, used both professionally and privately around the world. The products of this industrial enterprise are manufactured from start to finish in Ylöjärvi, Finland, where their production and office operations are supported by Purso lighting solutions.

Family businesses of the Pirkanmaa region working together

Both Purso and Avant Tecno are traditional family businesses of the Pirkanmaa region, creating plenty of jobs and wealth there. When thinking of a lighting solution, choosing a local producer was however not obvious, says Avant Tecno Property Manager Olli Mäkinen:

– The fact that the project support services and the light fixtures themselves are close in geographical terms is not sufficient by itself. The products must be the absolute best, too, and this is what Purso offers. Being local is just a nice bonus.

Purso industrial lights are used in many different stages: the compact loaders are made in Ylöjärvi all the way from laser cutting metal sheets to painting and final assembly. “Avants” are known for their high quality and versatility: there are more than 200 different attachments available. Multi-functional loaders can be used for instance for digging and transporting as well as for agricultural, forestry, and gardening tasks.

– Under good lights, it is possible to detect any surface finishing errors in the manufacturing stage, so having good lights certainly does support our high quality standards, says Mäkinen.

Industrial lights for ever expanding facilities

Avant Tecno operations have been expanding and becoming more international over the decades. The enterprise now has importers in dozens of countries and several sales companies around the world. Production volumes have had to grow along, and the Ylöjärvi facility has been expanded several times. Property Manager Olli Mäkinen says that expansion has first reached the limits of the old plot, after which more area has had to be bought from the neighbors: the building stock consists of layers from different periods.

Regional Sales Representative for Purso lighting solutions Tuomas Arha says that the Avant lighting story is typical of the industrial segment: First, industrial lights are procured for one hall segment. This makes everyone aware of the weakness of the old lights: luminosity may be poor, and more energy is consumed by orders of magnitude when compared to the new. Ultimately, all lights are replaced with the new and better products.

– At Avant, too, their traditional fluorescent lamps have been replaced with modern Purso LED lights on several occasions, says Arha.

It is often the best idea to replace the entire light fixture: old fluorescent lamp frames are often at the end of their service life, and such lamps are not originally designed for LED tubes.

Because the illuminated space is designed according to customer specifications, it is possible to optimize the number of lights, Arha says:

– At Avant Tecno, the number of lights was reduced when the new solution was adopted.

New industrial lights pay themselves back

Director of Electrical Works Jari Mäkelä says that he does not miss the times when he and Olli Mäkinen went around turning lights off to save energy. Controlled lights mean that illumination is available where it is needed. At Avant logistics, for instance, the lights in between the shelves are turned on by motion detectors, so they will not be on for nothing. The possibility to dim and control the lights in other ways improves ergonomics and conserves energy.

– Where the old lights used 36 kW of energy in one hall, the new SNEP® lights only use one sixth of that, or 6 kW. With thousands of square meters of floor area to illuminate, the new lights pay themselves back quickly, Mäkelä points out.

LED lights are also long-lasting and environmentally friendly in comparison to fluorescent tubes. Using LED technology also means achieving a smaller thermal load and not having to deal with harmful UV radiation.