Insider Media Limited

Abacus Lighting, based in Nottinghamshire, has won a contract to illuminate a new airport in China. Abacus will provide lighting for Kunming New International Airport, which is set to be the country's main hub for flights in and out of South East Asia. The creation of the airport is one of the largest construction projects currently underway in China.

Abacus will supply more than 80 of its patented raising and lowering winch masts carrying a total of 550 floodlights to the site.

Set for completion in early 2012, the airport will replace the current Wujajiba city airport and will accommodate about 60 million passengers annually.

Kunming was the gateway to the famous Silk Road that facilitated trade with Tibet, Sichuan, Myanmar and India.

The new airport is being constructed with the aim of becoming the country's main hub for South East Asia, linking China with countries including Vietnam, Thailand and Laos.

Earlier this year, Abacus opened a manufacturing facility in Shanghai, which will produce the lighting facilities for the airport.

Abacus’s group managing director, Andrew Morris-Richardson, said: "We are proud and delighted that Abacus Shanghai has won the apron lighting order at Kunming airport - the newest and most major airport construction project in China at the moment.

"With its first class design, engineering, installation and after sales capability, Abacus is well known in the China market, and the region, for its excellent and hard-won reputation as a world leader in exterior lighting."

Abacus’s airport floodlighting is also used in China’s Shanghai Pudong International Airport, Shanghai Hongqiao International Airport, Hong Kong International Airport at Chek Lap Kok, Wuhan Tianhe International Airport and Leeds Bradford Airport in the UK.

Other international projects include Kiev International Airport, Sharm El Sheikh International Airport, Sangster International Airport and Jamaica’s Norman Manley International Airport.