Ningbo Liaoyuan and Cree Deepen Cooperation; Bright Prospects for LED Road Lighting

　　Recently, a reporter from China Light Network interviewed Shao Yunzheng, Chairman of Ningbo Liaoyuan Industrial Group Co., Ltd., Lv Xubo, Marketing President of Ningbo Liaoyuan Industrial Group Co., Ltd., and Shao Jiaping, General Manager of Sales and Technical Director of Cree China, regarding the cooperation between the two parties in LED road lighting, future development trends of the LED road lighting market, and the impact that increasingly fierce market competition will bring to lighting companies, in an exclusive media interview.

　　Regarding the cooperation between the two parties in the field of LED road lighting, Shao Yunzheng, Chairman of Ningbo Liaoyuan Industrial Group Co., Ltd., said: "Ningbo Liaoyuan is currently the largest specialized lighting fixture manufacturer in China by scale. The company's leading products include high-power LED outdoor lighting fixtures, garden lights, industrial lights, tunnel lights, explosion-proof lights, landscape lights, and more. Cree is a globally leading supplier of LED packaging devices, with a rich product portfolio that fully meets our product design needs. Ningbo Liaoyuan has consistently used LED packaging devices manufactured by Cree in its LED road lighting products, achieving excellent results. These products deliver significant energy savings for road lighting and fully meet national road lighting standards in terms of luminous efficacy, brightness, illuminance, heat dissipation, and lifespan. Just recently, we and Cree jointly announced a successful case of main tunnel lighting for the Yunnan Wukun Expressway. This year, Ningbo Liaoyuan has won bids for several major LED road lighting projects and will continue to use Cree products, including further cooperation on projects such as the Zhengdong New District in Zhengzhou, the Haidong Industrial Park in Qinghai Province, and Lijiang in Yunnan."

　　Shao Jiaping, General Manager of Sales and Technical Director of Cree China, said: "Cree has consistently positioned itself in the Chinese market as the best LED packaging device supplier. Through continuous innovation, Cree provides the most advanced LED packaging devices to the domestic industry, helping lighting customers achieve products and solutions with higher lighting performance and lower system costs. Ningbo Liaoyuan is a great partner of Cree in the LED road lighting field. The two parties have maintained close cooperation in the high-power LED road lighting field for many years, leveraging their respective strengths to achieve win-win results and mutual growth. Targeting the LED road lighting market, Cree has launched products with different cost-performance ratios through optimized design, including the XP series, XM series, CXA series, XB-D, and XT-E, which can meet the product design needs of lighting customers across different market positioning, helping them achieve products and solutions with higher lighting performance and lower system costs. The excellent characteristics of Cree's LED packaging devices are not only reflected in their high luminous efficacy, high brightness, and high reliability, but also in their ability to produce near-perfect white light, achieving outstanding color rendering and color consistency, thereby providing a more comfortable human visual experience for both vehicle drivers and pedestrians in the road lighting field."

Shao Yunzheng, Chairman of Ningbo Liaoyuan Industrial Group Co., Ltd., pointed out: "Ningbo Liaoyuan's vision is to become a leading brand in the industry, to grow stronger and build a century-old Liaoyuan. Ningbo Liaoyuan's LED road lighting products have been widely used in major municipal engineering projects both domestically and internationally, and their excellent lighting performance is highly favored by customers at home and abroad. The achievements Ningbo Liaoyuan has made so far can be attributed to our continuous pursuit of lighting technology and stringent requirements for product quality. Leading technology is the driving force for enterprise development, while quality is the cornerstone of enterprise survival. As the core light-emitting component of LED lighting products, LED packaging devices largely determine the quality and market competitiveness of the final LED lighting products through their performance, reliability, and price. To summarize, Ningbo Liaoyuan has three core requirements for LED packaging devices: high performance, high reliability, and high cost-effectiveness. High performance and high reliability will bring LED road lighting more significant long-term energy-saving effects and a more comfortable human visual experience, while at the same time enabling faster recovery of investment costs under the contract energy management model. High cost-effectiveness will help the company gain a more advantageous position in the fierce market competition. LED packaging devices manufactured by Cree can well meet our needs and provide us with high-quality pre-sales and after-sales services, which is why we have always chosen Cree's products. In addition, Cree's advantages as an internationally leading brand and its strong intellectual property system also safeguard Ningbo Liaoyuan in domestic and international markets, both enhancing brand reputation and avoiding potential patent risks we might face in export markets."

Lv Xubo, Marketing President of Ningbo Liaoyuan Industrial Group Co., Ltd., added: "LED packaging devices manufactured by Cree have been tested through our long-term testing and actual project trials. First, Cree products have excellent performance, with industry-leading luminous efficacy and light output. Cree has recently announced a 303 lm/W laboratory luminous efficacy for high-power LEDs, and we hope Cree can quickly commercialize mass production of this achievement to provide the industry with higher-performance LED packaging devices. Furthermore, Cree products have very high reliability. Cree products use ceramic packaging, which enables them to operate normally at high temperatures and high currents, providing excellent reliability and lifespan. All Cree products have passed or are in the process of approving the LM-80 test, which is a very important guarantee. Moreover, Cree products actually offer great cost-effectiveness. Everyone says Cree products are expensive, but that's only seeing the surface. The acquisition of high cost-effectiveness cannot simply be determined by looking at the price of a single LED packaging device, but rather at its system cost. We need to comprehensively consider the luminous efficacy, light output, color consistency, optical matching, service life, unit price, etc., of a single LED packaging device. Specifically when it comes to lamp system costs, Cree products actually offer excellent cost-effectiveness. Through Ningbo Liaoyuan's optimized processes combined with Cree's high-efficacy and high-output LED packaging devices, we can design LED road lighting products that achieve higher lighting performance while using fewer LED packaging devices and optical components, thus reducing system costs. According to our calculations, the system costs achieved in this way are actually comparable to those using domestic/Taiwanese LED packaging devices."

When discussing the development trends of the LED road lighting market in the next three years, Shao Yunzheng, Chairman of Ningbo Liaoyuan Industrial Group Co., Ltd., believes: "LED lighting technology is a disruptive technology that will comprehensively change people's lives in the future. We have an optimistic expectation for the future. From a technical perspective, LED lighting technology can already meet the needs of road lighting. The development of LED lighting technology is more rapid than we originally expected. For example, the luminous efficacy level of Cree's LED packaging devices has been achieved six years earlier than the technology roadmap estimated by the U.S. Department of Energy. This will accelerate the pace at which LED lighting technology replaces traditional lighting technology in the road lighting field. From a market perspective, with the improvement of technology and products, we can see more and more successful cases of LED road lighting, and previous doubts are gradually decreasing. End-user owners are increasingly confident in adopting LED lighting technology in the road lighting field, which will fully accelerate the adoption of LED lighting technology in road lighting. From the overall macroeconomic environment, the further advancement of domestic urbanization and the gradual recovery of the global economy will boost the overall LED road lighting market."

When discussing what impact the increasingly fierce market competition will have on lighting enterprises, Shao Yunzheng, Chairman of Ningbo Liaoyuan Industrial Group Co., Ltd., wisely answered: "We believe there is absolutely no need to worry excessively about competition in the industry. The LED lighting market is very large; it is not a market that one company can dominate. We are pleased to see that thanks to the joint efforts of domestic lighting-related associations, societies, alliances, and other industry organizations and industry colleagues over the years, LED road lighting has achieved very good results, and the entire LED road lighting market is becoming increasingly standardized. LED lighting technology has been able to replace traditional lighting technology in road lighting applications. More enterprises entering the LED road lighting field will promote reasonable competition in the entire industry. Competition will further promote the improvement of LED road lighting technology and bring a new generation of more cost-effective solutions, giving end-user owners greater confidence in fully adopting LED road lighting technology to replace traditional road lighting technology. The wider adoption of LED road lighting technology will help expand the entire market share, ultimately benefiting end-user owners, LED lighting manufacturers, LED device suppliers, LED supporting product suppliers, and all other parties."