Taiwan Int'l Lighting Show 2012 Draws 20% More Exhibitors

Exhibitors from mid-to-upstream industry the key reason for success

This year's Taiwan International Lighting Show (TILS 2012), held March 13-16 in Taipei and co-organized by the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) and Taiwan Lighting Fixture Export Association (TLFEA), saw the annual meetings of the Global Lighting Association (GLA) and Zhaga Consortium (an industry cooperation platform for LED lighting) take place a day before the lighting fair.

The GLA announced the renaming of itself on the first day of the show: the Global Lighting Forum (GLF), representing an estimated 5,000 lighting manufacturers globally, which, according to GLA president Jan Denneman, will motivate restructuring the association and missions to enable the international trade body to be even more active to affect, meet changes in the global lighting industry.

A major task for the GLA ahead is to push for international standards of the emerging energy-saving lighting sources. “The product standards are made mainly for strengthening consumers' confidence on the new products,” said Denneman. “While there are the international standards for the global lighting industry, individual countries may make regulations of their own to reflect their different market conditions.”

A special guest at the opening ceremony of the TILS, Denneman said: “We are very happy to hold our annual meeting here and every member representative would go to the show.”

Living up to his role as a ranking civil servant, Economics Minister Francis Liang lobbied for Taiwan's lighting sector in the global market backed by its combined advantages of the island's LED and electronics technologies, and said that the Taiwan government will continue to promote development of green lighting.

Likewise for TAITRA Vice President Walter Yeh, who said that the TILS, since its inception two years ago, has attracted enthusiastic participation by lighting companies who will soon make the event a primary trade platform for the global LED industry.

“In this day and age when high technology is being merged with illumination, Taiwan's lighting industry has been given a new lease on life,” said David Chang, Chairman of TLFEA.

International Buyers
Besides seeing increasing international visitors, the TILS enables buyers to source new products, but perhaps more importantly broadens their horizon on industrial trends in exhibits by many leading LED lighting manufacturers.

Maurizio Cugini, a senior manager at the Italian lighting firm Altair, was a second-time visitor, who said the event has grown very quickly, looks more professional, and has exhibitors from all levels of the supply chain to provide products and technologies to meet needs of different buyers.

Cugini was accompanied by two engineering colleagues who also praised the event, saying Taiwan's LED technology is very competitive and that the long flight has been worth the effort.

Seemingly underwhelmed by the size of the event, Hank Yuh, managing director of Even Sphere in the U.S., said the show should be at least twice the size given Taiwan's position as a leading LED manufacturer globally, and that, despite expanding in scale over the past two years, the TILS has plenty of room for growth given the rising popularity of LED lighting worldwide.

Abdullah Achmad Ghaeti, technical manager of PT. Global Mitra Teknik in Indonesia, was sourcing all kinds of consumer green lighting products, who said that, with the rapidly growing Indonesian economy in recent years, increasing consumer power motivates Indonesians to buy energy-saving lamps when shopping for lighting, making LED lighting poised for potential growth in the near future.

Gist of Event's Success
Under the auspices of the Bureau of Foreign Trade (BOFT), TILS 2012 gathered 321 exhibitors across 782 booths, both numbers up over 20% from last year.

The exhibition consists of mid-to-upstream manufacturers to offer product variety, the reason for the show to attract buyers from all over the world and continue to build profile on the international market.

Organizers attribute the success of the show to the support of the major companies which act as a magnet to draw in smaller firms, with the bigger names including Epistar, Everlight, Delta Electronics, AMKO SOLOARA Lighting, Jan Cheng, Taiwan Lighting, Genesis Photonics, Welly Power, JustLed, BJB Electric, Future Lighting Solution, China Electric, TYC Brother Industrial, Edison-Opto, oration, LVD International, Tung-Chou Energy, Avertronics, and others which cover the lighting, optronics and other related industries.

Innovations
Jan-Cheng Lighting, a specialist supplier of lighting equipment and logistics service, debuted several new models of LED lighting, with the “70W Halo Pendant Lamp” selected by the show organizer for display at the “Innovation Product Area” due to unique appearance and function. Besides developing innovative LED lighting, the maker also has a bigger-than-life motto: believing visually-comfortable, energy-saving and eco-friendly lighting offers improved aesthetic, lifestyle enjoyment, as well as beautifies homes, commercial spaces, and inner inspirit.

Upgraded from a traditional Taiwanese lighting company dating back to 1954, Taiwan Light Co. introduced a series of new products featuring cutting-edge conductance technology which is used to produce a wide range of high-power, high-luminosity, energy-efficient LED lighting products and equipment.

“Our technology helps quickly cool heat generated by LED bulbs, and we offer all kinds of models to consumers to overcome various lighting problems,” said the maker.