Philips Lighting mulls LED facility

Philips Lighting, a market leader in professional and consumer lighting solutions market, is pinning hopes on the LED sector for future growth.

The company, along with marketing its conventional products, is gearing up to garner a major pie in the LED sector.

“The LED market is slowly growing and is going to be a major market soon. We are also ready to make use of the opportunities.

There is some activity already happening in the LED sector in the form of street lights and other professional lighting solutions,” Nirupam Sahay, senior director-marketing, Philips Lighting, said.

While the company is convinced that the LED market would hold promise in future, it is also evaluating options to set up a facility to manufacture LEDs in India. “We are evaluating the options of setting up a facility. For now, we are importing LEDs, but will look at a facility depending on the growth in the market,” he said.

Additionally, the company is also looking at growth in CFL lighting.

While tapping the conventional market channels, the company is currently engaged in discussions with some state government agencies for taking compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) to various markets. Making use of the Bachat Lamp Yojana, a central government programme, aimed at reducing the cost of CFLs sold to consumers for promoting energy efficiency.

The Bureau of Energy Efficiency under the Ministry of Power handles the project by procuring CFLs at lower cost than the cost of normal bulbs.

The bureau will seek the differential in the price through certified emission rights (CERs) under the clean energy development mechanism of the Kyoto Protocol.

“We are supplying about 16.5 million CFLs to the Kerala government to distribute to about 7.5 million households at two bulbs per household. We definitely sell them at lower rate than the market price. We are looking at similar arrangements with other states. There are many players in this space too, but as a market leader we have our own market share,” he said.

The company is looking at CFL and LEDs to emerge growth engines for its future. While the lighting industry in general is recording about 7-9% growth every year, Sahay said that the company was growing at a higher rate.