Topco Technologies Unveils Aggressive LED Lighting Plans

The Topco Technologies Co. expects to boost its annual revenue from 2007's NT$6 billion (US$187 million at US$1:NT$32) to NT$10 billion (US$312 million) in 2010 by developing the light-emitting diode (LED) lighting business, which the company has recently added to business scope.

The company was founded in 1981 to import silicon wafers and other semiconductor materials. It diversified into the energy-conservation business around a year and a half ago and recently introduced a number of LED-lighting products, including LED energy-saving lamps and solar-powered LED streetlights.

"We'll introduce more LED lamps for lighting applications in the next quarter and are targeting Japan, the United Kingdom, Germany, Australia, and North European countries as our major markets," reported Topco chairman C.J. Wang.

The new energy-conservation business contributed 15% of the company's total revenue last year, while the silicon business accounted for 50-52% and electronics 30-33%. The company is forecasting a 20-30% growth for the two latter sectors this year. Last year, the company chalked up record earnings of NT$12.3 per share before tax.

Wang is bullish about the future of the LED-lighting market, noting that the buzz of emissions-reduction and energy-conservation talk will help his company realize its 2010 goal. "Many areas, including Australia, Canada, and the European Union, have made the phasing out of incandescent lamps and their replacement with LED lamps their national economic-development and energy-saving policy for the next three to five years," he comments.

The market is promising not only overseas but also in Taiwan, Wang notes. In Taiwan, the Executive Yuan, Taiwan's Cabinet, recently decided that all government organizations will replace incandescent lamps with LED lamps at their offices beginning in the first quarter of 2009. Afterwards, the ban on incandescent lamps will be extended to private organizations including hospitals, hotels, and stores, as well as private residences. Beginning in 2010, Taiwanese lamp makers will stop producing incandescent lamps.

Replacing the Old with New LED

The Bureau of Energy under the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) plans to begin replacing the remaining incandescent lamps in traffic lights on roads across the island this year. All government buildings will be required to use LED architecture and landscape lights, and mercury lights on lesser streets are to be replaced as well.

"This replacements will likely bring Taiwan electricity savings of 41%." Wang estimates.

A big break for Topco's LED lighting systems has come from the 2012 London Olympic Games, according to Wang. "Not long ago," he explains, "a British system-integration supplier approached us about supplying it with an LED lighting system. We have already obtained qualification to put our LED lights into field tests, and will conduct the testing and display of the lights in first quarter of 2008 in cooperation with the British integrator."

Another major deal came from Fuji Electric, which signed a contract in February this year to buy Topco's LED lamps. The contract opens Topco's door to the Japanese lighting market, which demands around 500 million lighting fixtures a year.

The deal with Fuji Electric came as no surprise. Topco has had a long association with Japanese manufacturer Shin-Etsu Silicone, serving as the Japanese firm's silicon-product dealer in Taiwan.

Shin-Etsu Silicone Taiwan is just one of the companies currently operating under the Topco umbrella. Others include Topco G&D, Topco Scientific, Topco Quartz Products, Topglow Trading, and T.S.C.

In addition to Japan and the United Kingdom, Topco has also begun tapping markets in Germany, Australia, Sweden, Finland, and Norway, where electricity bills are relatively high. The company's executives note that energy-saving products tend to be accepted in these countries because they allow consumers to recoup their spending on the products from their savings on electricity bills. (Compared with incandescent lamps, LED lamps offer electricity savings of 80%.)

Topco has made its 13W, 700-lumen LED lamps available at shops so that consumers can buy them to replace 23W fluorescent lamps. "LED lamps can serve as mainstream light sources in daily life only when their brightness reaches 600 lumens," Wang notes. "However, most LED-lighting manufacturers can now provide lamps that emit only 300-400 lumens."

More LED Advantages

Wang notes that another advantage of LED lamps is their long life span, which he says can reach 20,000 hours--around 10 times the life of incandescent lamps and fluorescent lamps. "Although LED lamps are still expensive, the amount of the energy they save may be enough to cancel the need for a nuclear power plant," the chairman claims.

In addition, LED lamps do not contain mercury, as do fluorescent and high intensity discharge (HID) lamps, and use non-lead package materials, making them compliant with RoHS standards.

Topco executives point out that impressive progress has been made in the color-rendering performance of LED lamps; their color-rendering index has reached 70, which is close to the 80 achieved by fluorescent lamps. (The index is a benchmark for measuring how true the color of an object is under a light source by comparing the light source with sunlight. Usually, an index of 50 is considered acceptable.)

Wang reports that his company introduced 80 lumen-watt lamps last year and will unveil 100 lumen-watt models this year. "When we decided to make the lamps, we decided to make the best in the industry," he stresses. "So, we did not feel it was too tough when the United States government asked LED lighting manufacturers to introduce 70 lumen-watt lamps in 2007, 80 lumen-watt lamps in 2009, and 100 lumen-watt lamps in 2009."

Before moving into the LED-lighting business, Wang himself spent two months working out LED technologies. He notes that Topco's major advantage in this sector is its background in the silicon business, which supplies ideal thermal-dissipation materials for LED lamps. "Good LED technology allows the lamps to give off more illumination while generating less heat," Wang says. "But substandard technology does the opposite. Ours is the right technology for good performance."

Wang stresses that silicon glue is an ideal material for encasing high-power LED lamps and for dissipating heat from LED chips connected to electric cathodes and anodes. "Silicon glue," he explains, "resists both high and low temperatures and is a good insulator and chemical stabilizer as well, making it an ideal material for a wide range of applications including mobile phones, game consoles, and keyboards in addition to LED packaging," Wang notes.