Lamp Makers Turn Attention to High-End Niche Markets

Facing an increasingly competitive landscape in the mass market, lamp manufacturers on both sides of the Taiwan Strait are making a concerted effort to develop niche markets for high-quality specialty products.

The various strategies adopted by the manufacturers, while dissimilar in many regards, share a common commitment to developing more powerful and cost-efficient products with long life spans and safe designs. Their major target markets are household consumers and retailers, in light of production capabilities that are not set up for the making of industry-use lamps.

Halogen lamps, compact fluorescent lamps, and power-saving lamps are the major products currently under the R&D spotlight. Mainland China has emerged as the dominant manufacturer of these types of lamps thanks to its cheap production costs, steadily advancing manufacturing techniques, and ample availability of raw materials such as quartz glass and tungsten.

Halogen-lamp makers on both sides of the strait have begun producing lamps similar to Osram's patented JCD G9 lamp, a high-voltage model noted for its burst-proof design. For their part, manufacturers of compact fluorescent lamps on the two sides have been working hard to enable their electronic ballasts to work with lamps in all specifications.

Burst-Proof

Peace Lighting Co., Ltd., a Taiwan-based halogen-lamp maker, is developing globe-type halogen lamps modeled after traditional incandescent lamps. Two years ago the company introduced a compact blast-proof halogen bulb modeled after Osram's JCD G9 bulb, overcoming a key problem--halogen bulbs tend to burst when they burn out, as the failing tungsten filament overheats and swells the halogen gas in the bulb.

Peace owner James Chen believes that halogen lamps will grab a significant part of the market now taken by incandescent lamps, due to their longer life, greater luminosity, and compact size.

Osram introduced the G9 several years ago, and since then many Taiwanese lamp manufacturers have been striving to re-create the technology. Chen claims that Peace is one of only a handful of manufacturers in Taiwan that can make the burst-proof device used in the bulbs.

Peace has patented its G9 design in mainland China and Taiwan; Chen stresses that the bulb is not simply a knock-off of Osram's design. "We designed the filament to work as a safety fuse," he explains. "When the heat reaches melting point, the filament melts at one end and then the heat begins to dissipate, and the temperature fall, as electricity stops passing through the filament." The unit also has a reinforced seal over the end of the quartz bulb to prevent leakage of the halogen gas.

Chen's company has been developing 120- to 230-volt household-use lamps around its G9 bulb. The company has also developed a bulb-holder unit featuring a safety device that prevents contact with the bulb pins (or electrodes). The holders are made of one-piece-formed ceramic and have been patented in Taiwan and mainland China. Chen claims that this design has been adopted

by lighting-source heavyweights such as Osram.

Peace Lighting ships most of its G9 lamps to Europe, the United States, and Canada, and sees mainland China as a market with significant potential. The firm believes that consumers will opt for the various models as an alternative to incandescent lamps, despite their higher cost.

Chen plans to double output of the globe-shaped G9 lamps to 400,000 to 600,000 units a month next year, in expectation that the price gap between incandescent lamps and its G9 models can be reduced. The company has moved production to mainland China to lower production costs, and plans to expand its facilities there in the second half of this year.

Peace opened its mainland halogen-lamp factory in 1992 in the coastal province of Zhejiang. The location is well suited for such production since two elite universities offering science programs dedicated to lighting-source research and design are located nearby--Zhejiang University and Fudan University. Chen notes that his company has also benefited from industrial techniques offered by state-owned lighting enterprises.

Peace currently provides JCD, PAR, HR and MR halogen lamps; all have UL, RU, CSA, and DVE approval.

Long Life

Pei Yu Enterprise Co., Ltd. Has developed a niche market for high-power energy-saving fluorescent lamps delivering steady illumination even after long use. According to company owner C.C. Lee, the Energy & Resources Lab of the government-backed Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) has demonstrated that Pei Yu's lamps can burn over 7,000 hours with a light-loss rate of only

20%.

The firm's 15- to 32-watt models have passed Taiwan's rigorous Chinese National Standard (CNS) testing and also meet UL, CSA, FCC, and T standards. The lamps have electronic ballasts with a power factor of more than 0.92 and total harmonic distortion (THD) of less than 30%.

Pei Yu's heat-dissipation design for its 7W and 20W lamps are patented in Taiwan and mainland China. Lee claims that the temperature in the ballast case for these models never surpasses 80 degrees centigrade. "Most of the lamps now available will heat up to over 100 degrees, which can easily cause short-circuiting," he states. In addition, to overcome the problem of swelling and shrinkage of lamp tubes because of temperature fluctuations Pei Yu has shrunk its lamp tubes to only 8mm in diameter.

Over the two years since it began making compact fluorescent lamps, Lee reports that Pei Yu has achieved a defect ratio of barely 1%. Moreover, he continues, the company has been able to maintain this high level of quality without charging buyers an arm and a leg. "Our lamps are only about NT$7 (about 20 US cents) more expensive than comparable lamps made in mainland China," Lee says. By way of comparison, name-brand compact fluorescent lamps produced in Taiwan are generally tens or hundreds of NT dollars pricier than mainland-made lamps.

Pei Yu makes 20,000 to 30,000 compact fluorescent lamps a month for sale in the domestic market. It plans to more than double the output to around 50,000 lamps a month next year in order to meet export orders expected with an upcoming push into foreign markets. It is also capable of turning out 105W fluorescent lamps for outdoor use.

Lee says that all of the lamps made by his company deliver stable performance thanks to their high-quality electronic ballasts. Pei Yu, he continues, has been making ballasts and transformers for nearly 20 years, and has recently developed a technique for making electronic ballasts usable with all brands of compact fluorescent lamps.

The company also makes an advanced dimmer that can control numerous lamps at the same time, Lee says.

Power Misers

Sunpark Electronics (Taiwan) Corp. has carved out a niche in energy-saving bulbs with bacteria-killing ultraviolet lamps and refrigerator lamps, which together account for around 40% of the company's total output.

According to company chairman Y.F. Chu, demand for the two types of lamps has increased considerably in recent years. "The rising demand for ultraviolet lamps reflects the growing demand for cleaner air; energy-saving refrigerator lamps are also in greater demand as replacements for more power-hungry models," he explains.

Sunpark has won the "Energy Star" label and U.S. UL approval for its lamps thanks in large part to the company's efficient electronic ballasts. According to Chu, the ballasts have many smart features, including patented circuitry that shuts down the device when there are power overloads. The ballasts also reduce power consumption to one-fourth the level of other bulbs of similar luminosity, he claims.

Sunpark lamps have an average life of over 6,000 hours and a THD (total harmonic distortion) of less than 30%. Its power factor is more than 90% and its heat-dissipation design allows it to maintain heat in the ballast case at less than 90 degrees centigrade.

The company's electronic ballasts are mostly utilized in lamps in a power range of 100 to 300 volts.

A 20-year veteran in the ballast industry, Sunpark expanded into the production of compact fluorescent lamps around four years ago. It now produces one million electronic ballasts in Taiwan annually and an undisclosed number of energy-saving lamps at a joint-venture facility in mainland China. The firm also has a branch in the United States developing ballast-related technology.

Chu sees nothing but bright prospects for his business, noting that his company's products are less expensive and of higher quality than many rival products.

High Voltage

Founded in mainland China in 1995, Hengye Lighting & Electrical Factory recently shifted its attentions from low- to high-voltage halogen lamps, including G9 and GU10 models.

"High-voltage lamps are superior to low-voltage types in terms of brightness and cost, so they have won the favor of more and more households," says the company owner. High-voltage lamps, he explains, don't require expensive transformers, making them cheaper to make than low-voltage lamps.

Like Peace Lighting, Ho's company also produces burst-proof G9 lamps and has its own unique burst-proof design. Its G9 lamps, says the owner, have an average life span of 2,000 hours to 3,000 hours.

Both the company's low- and high-voltage lamps have won CE and TUV safety approval, facilitating their export to Europe. The company has also earned its ISO9002 badge, in 2001.

Hengye turns out three million high-voltage and low-voltage lamps combined a month at its factory, which employs more than 800 workers. G9 lamps account for about a tenth of the company's output. "We expect our G9 sales to rise 20% this year because of increasing market demand," states the owner. However, he continues, the news is not all good--prices for such lamps have dropped by about 10% over the past few years due to increasing competition.