Commercial Spotlights-Taiwan Hones Lighting Edge With Cross-Strait Operations

Like most of their peers in the other sectors of the domestic lighting market, Taiwan's spotlight manufacturers have expanded or moved their production lines across the Taiwan Strait in recent times, leaving their home operations to focus on handling financial affairs and filling smaller orders.

Due to market demand and trends in technological development, commercial lighting in recent years has been dominated by high-intensity discharge (HID) lamps or so-called metal-halide lamps, steadily supplanting the traditional incandescent and halogen lamps. HID lamps are preferred over the older types because of superior longevity, luminosity, and efficiency.

Ceramic metal halides (CMH) and quartz metal halides (QMH) are two sub-groups within the HID-lamp family. The former are generally better than the latter in terms of lighting quality. CHM bulbs are made by the world's three leading lighting manufacturers--General Electric (GE) of the U.S., Osram of Germany, and Philips of the Netherlands. Philips commands a 60-70% share of the global market in this line.



CHM the Golden Goose


In Taiwan, Carry Beam Co., Ltd. Has been making CHM bulbs for about seven years and been very successful in the line. Today the company is Philips' most successful CHM-bulb sales agent in Asia.

According to company president William Wun, Carry Beam has been in the lighting industry for more than two decades. In the beginning, the company focused on the production of ballasts and later started assembling lamps. However, the company's business really started to take off when it entered the CHM lamp market.

"We have grown by around 30% to 50% in both production volume and revenue since 1998, when we began making CMH lamps, " Wun states. "Today this item is a major revenue earner for us."

Wun says that the CMH lamps provide a much higher lighting quality and energy efficiency compared with other lighting sources, making it a good alternative to incandescent and halogen light sources. "CMH lamps resolve problems that have plagued older style QMH lamps, such as high lumen depreciation, low color rendition and poor color consistency, " he says.

Carry Beam turns out CMH lamps on both sides of the Taiwan Strait. In mainland China the company has established a plant in Xiamen of Fujian Province, with a workforce of some 40 persons, turning out ballasts and CMH lamps. The company's office in Taiwan has a staff of less than 10 persons in charge of R&D and marketing. "We expect our output to double this year, " Wun says.

Today Carry Beam exports 80% of its output. Japan, the United States and Europe account for over 70% of the company's total export volume. Wun says that energy efficiency and environmental protection considerations make CMH lamps welcome in those markets.

"Generally speaking, developed countries use much more energy and electricity than developing and underdeveloped countries, and this is the main reason that they prefer energy efficient CMH lamps, " Wun says. "Although the sales price of one CMH lamp at around NT$3, 000 (US$97 at US$1:NT$31) is much higher than NT$200 (US$6.45) for a traditional incandescent or fluorescent lamp, CHM bulbs are more energy efficient, making them a better value over the long run." Today CMH lamps account for about 80% of the commercial lighting market in Japan and Europe.

To meet growing market demand, Carry Beam has established sales channels in both Taiwan and the mainland. The company has an affiliate in the United States in charge of marketing there, and it plans to further its sales outlets in the U.S. and Asia as well.



Spotlights


Founded in 2003, House Lighting Co., Ltd. Is a newcomer to the lighting industry, but it has rapidly built a reputation in the spotlight market with backing from a more established lighting company in Taiwan. The company currently has operations on both sides of the Taiwan Strait, says Liann Lin, sales manager of the company.

House Lighting has set up a plant in Dongguan of Guangdong Province to fabricate spotlights supplied mainly to Taiwanese lighting manufacturers in the mainland, while its plant in Taiwan focuses on the production of high-end products provided to the domestic market and exported to South America, the Middle East, and Europe. The company's office in Taiwan is also in charge of shipment affairs and inventory management.

In its first year, House Lighting sold about 30% of its products domestically. That figure has grown to about half of total output as the local market grows.

House Lighting's spotlights have aluminum cases and come in a range of lighting sources, including energy-saving fluorescent tubes, halogen bulbs, and HID bulbs. "Most of our customers in Taiwan, mainland China and the Middle East prefer lower priced fluorescent tubes for commercial use spotlights, but some customers focused on the high-end market prefer our more expensive HID bulbs, " Lin says.

"Spotlights with aluminum cases are 10% to 20% more costly than lights with cases made of other metal materials, " Lin says. "The facilities and machines need to be more sophisticated for aluminum casting, but such technology enables better quality control and superior product appearance, " Lin says.

Production of aluminum cases also requires advanced molding technology, which also boosts manufacturing costs, Lin notes. "It's not easy to find experienced workers with molding skill and know-how, so there are far fewer manufacturers that can turn out spotlights with aluminum-casting cases than there are producers that use cases made of other metals."

With few rivals, House Lighting has posted strong profits over the past two year. "We have skillful and experienced workers who can develop different kinds of molds to meet market needs. This has helped our products to rapidly gain popularity in the market, " Lin says.

Lin, who travels frequently across the Taiwan Strait, observes that the worker quality in Taiwan is much better than that in the mainland. "It's much easier for me to train our employees in Taiwan because they catch on quickly. In mainland China, we often have to drill our workers over and over again to make sure they get it right."

House Lighting has grown rapidly in Taiwan over the past two years, and today it is one of the three leading suppliers of spotlights on the island. The company hopes that it can sell its own brand spotlights in the future.

In the mainland, the company broke even in the first year and expects to see a 30% profit this year. The mainland plant has a workforce of about 200 persons and generates production value of more than NT$20 million (US$650, 000) per month.

The company first entered the export market with shipments to South America. Since then, it has expanded its export channels to the Middle East and Western Europe. It now plans to expand into Eastern Europe, Russia and Japan. This year the company has already received a few orders from Japan and is expected to secure additional orders from that market in the second half of the year.

"Our operations on both sides of the Taiwan Strait are complementary, " Lin says. "We make good use of the advantages of the both sides to efficiently turn out quality spotlights to meet the needs of the global market. We foresee a bright future in this line."


Invariably Good

Another Taiwanese company that has found its niche in the high-end industrial/commercial-lighting segment is Variable Luminaire Ltd. The company has achieved considerable success over the past 14 years through a combination of high quality and a tight focus on the U.S. market, says its president Chen Shih-hui. Its integrated operating strategy, which includes streamlined operations and the constant development of new products, has also helped.

Many of Variable Luminaire's products are inspired by commercial-lighting products developed by leading European brands, Chen comments, but modified to suit the U.S. market.

This strategy is not as simple as it might seem, Chen stresses, because European lighting products are often integrally designed while in the U.S. market the safety-protection devices (including power supply systems) used with recess lights and surface trim need to be separated. Providing for this separation requires complicated R&D work in the areas of materials, structures, and heat dissipation, as well as a solid knowledge of patent rights. His company, Chen claims, has a competitive edge in all of these areas.

The company recently introduced its T92 series of recess lights (in models with one to six lamps), which can serve as either spotlights or downlights through simple angle adjustments. Its high-end surface coating and elegant styling make the new series an attractive decorative addition, especially in upscale commercial spaces. The company is also introducing light-emitting diode (LED) lamps in its spotlights and downlights.

Variable Luminaire is now developing HID recess lamps using the latest 80W PL energy-saving tubes. Chen confidently expects this new line to set a new design standard for the high-end commercial-lighting market.