Manufacturer News: 6.7.2011

Lighting Briefs

GE-Cree deal brouhaha—analysts at Canaccord Genuity “confirmed [that Cree] had won the 60W replacement bulb business at General Electric,” according to a May 24 Reuters news item. But shortly thereafter, the Reuters wire moved another report—both GE and Cree denied that a deal had been struck.

            From Kim Freeman, a spokeswoman for GE’s lighting and appliance unit, as quoted by Reuters May 24: “There is no basis for this rumor. We have not made a decision.”

Philips’ Eftekhar: LED prices to fall 50% by 2017—a May 17 Cnet report quoted Zia Eftekhar, head of Philips Lighting. From the item:

            “Take a look at what happened in commercial areas where the prices for outdoor LED lighting fell by 5%. If you asked me would those types of savings be a reasonable projection for (all LED lighting) over the next five years, my answer would immediately be ‘Yes,’” Eftekhar said.

            See also: tedmag’s earlier article on an interview with Eftekhar and a piece on what he said from the podium at last year’s EE Global conference.

SavWatt & distributors—SavWatt USA claimed in a May 24 release that it has signed up energy service providers and electrical supply distributors—more than 100 partners by the end of May. The company said it is a pioneer in LED lighting.

ULT & distributors—Universal Lighting Technologies in April began a new program “to reward distributor sales staffs for educating themselves about the company’s energy-saving ballasts, control systems, lamps, and lampholders.” Title: The Efficiency Zone Rewards program (aka EZ Rewards)

WAC Lighting & distributors—WAC said it launched its first “Custom Display Program…to build lighting distributor sales while offering a broad selection of the latest decorative and task lighting.”

Acquisitions, Combinations & More 

ABB’s shopping spree—detailed here. What’s it all about? DC-powered data centers, according to the article. See also this report on ABB’s acquisition of Validus DC Systems, which includes this:
            ABB says DC technology is substantially more energy efficient than traditional alternating current (AC) technology for electrical distribution. DC systems are also less complex, requiring less space and equipment, resulting in considerable additional savings in real estate and capital expenditure.

Acuity Brands’ 4.93% owner—a report (here) noted that M&G Investment Funds 1 of London owns 4.93% of the common stock outstanding of Acuity Brands.

Energy Focus may lose listing—with its stock trading below the $1 minimum requirement, Energy Focus may see its stock delisted. According to an SEC filing by the company, it has until Nov. 14 to “regain compliance.”

LSG reschedules meeting—its annual stockholders’ meeting was set for May 25, but Lighting Science Group postponed it to gain time “to prepare and commence the mailing of its 2010 annual report.”

Pioneer fashions division—the low-voltage transformer division of Pioneer, according to a May 24 release, consists of Jefferson Electric and two newly acquired companies: Transformateur Bemag and Vermont Transformer. Putting the three together, Pioneer said, “will allow the companies to leverage each others’ products and further penetrate the U.S. and Canadian markets.”

Schneider Electric to buy Telvent—the company last week offered $2 billion to buy Telvent, a software company involved in the smart grid. Schneider’s offer came at a 36% premium to Telvent’s average stock-market price over the previous three months, the company said; Abengoa SA, which owns 40% of Telvent, had agreed with Schneider on the offer. Telvent has 6,000-plus employees in at least 19 countries; sales in 2010 were given as roughly $1.1 billion.

Toshiba to buy Landis+Gyr—price: $2.3 billion. A Forbes.com blog identified the target company as “the Swiss pioneer of many of the energy-management systems widely used by electric utilities” and a “smart grid pioneer.”

Toshiba + Unison—Unison, a Korean wind-power equipment supplier, has entered into an agreement with Toshiba “for the co-development and marketing of wind power generators.”

Global News From Electrical Suppliers

African Energy—identified as “an American solar equipment distributor” in a release, this company reportedly held 20 training sessions in Africa recently. The last of these, a two-day seminar in Harare, Zimbabwe, included trainers from Deka Battery, Magnum Energy, Morningstar, and Schneider Electric.

American Superconductor—the company said its HTS wire is now being used in an electrical substation in Baiyin (Gansau province) in China.

Apex Wiring Solutions—this U.K.-based manufacturing firm has quadrupled sales in the past four years, according to The Northern Echo—and opened a new plant (Sept. 2010) in Dubai. The success is built on “ready-assembled cabling systems it first developed nine years ago, that replace traditional wiring techniques.”

Emerson—the company signed a cooperation agreement with South Ural State University (the release’s dateline is Chelyabinsk, Russia) “to support and promote teaching and training related to advanced manufacturing processes, with a special focus on process automation for the oil and gas industry.”

Furukawa—the fiber-optic maker said it drew “close to 500” executives to its Ibero-American channel partner summit, which was held in Brazil.

FZLED—this operation of FZTech of Taiwan said in early May that it would “begin offering several lines of high-performance LED products to consumers.”

Havells India—in mid-April, it opened a European headquarters in London. Earlier, the headquarters was in Germany.

Larsen and Toubro—this private infrastructure firm, based in India, “has sought shareholders’ approval to transfer its electrical and automation business to a subsidiary,” according to an April report from Asia Pulse.

            Separately, The Economic Times claimed that analysts said “the move is a step towards selling off the business.” Schneider and Eaton are “believed to be in the race to acquire the business.”

Legrand—the company acquired SMS of Brazil, said to be “the market leader for UPS.” According to an April 28 release on Business Wire: “Legrand is actively continuing its development through self-financed acquisitions of small- to medium-size businesses with leading places on their markets.” The release also claimed that “new economies…should account for 35% of total [Legrand] sales this year.”

Leviton—a 485-word profile of the company’s structured cabling efforts appeared in the United Arab Emirates’ publication, the Khaleej Times (May 21). Included was a quote from Ramzi Nassif, managing director for the Middle East: “We are proud of being one of the leading innovators in the industry. The easy migration path provided by the 40/100G technology is allowing customers greater flexibility to achieve higher speeds in zero downtime.”

Littelfuse—the company sponsored Ho-Pin Tung’s effort to get into the Indianapolis 500. Had he succeeded, he would have been the first Chinese national to race in the famed event.

Panduit—from an April 14 Business News Americas item comes this quote from Maximiliano Schlez, Panduit’s general manager for the Southern Cone (of South America): “We can clearly say that government projects are boosting our overall business in Argentina, mostly in data centers for national and municipal bodies. We are also seeing opportunities in video surveillance projects.”

Ringdale—this company, which says it is “a global leader in the development of intelligent LED lighting technology,” said recently that it had a first sale in Latin America of its commercial lighting fixtures. The sale was made by Clean Technology Solutions, which Ringdale said was “a major distributor of energy-efficient technologies in Latin America.”

Schneider Electric—has signed a partnership agreement with GIL Automation Nigeria Ltd., conferring on the latter the status of an Elite System Integrator.

S.D. Myers—the Ohio-based company said that it was one of five “major companies in the transformer maintenance industry” who were co-sponsoring the first Latin American Transformer Maintenance Symposium, to be held June 21-23 in the Dominican Republic.

Success Transformer—an article in Malaysia’s Business Times (March 21) noted that this “manufacturer of low-voltage transformers and commercial and industrial lightings” thinks its newly launched LED products will drive sales in 2011. From Woh Way Cheang, executive director: “We are very careful and conservative and didn’t want to sell immature products. In a lot of LED products, there are heat issues—so we wanted to make sure that our products addressed the issue before going to market.”

Sustainable Energy Technologies—this Canadian company has entered into an agreement with Eclipsall Energy under which they will work together “to design, package, and market upwards of 10MW of solar power ‘kits’ based on the SUNERGY inverter.”