Welcome to the LEDs Magazine News & Insights newsletter for Apr. 7, 2021. I’m not going to declare a win over the coronavirus today and risk the terrible luck that typically hits me when I celebrate a victory by one of my sports teams prematurely. But things are looking up despite new surges in some areas. Vaccination is happening at a rapid rate. California Governor Newsom suggested yesterday that restrictions on business gatherings could end in June if progress against COVID-19 continues.
We of course have a vested interest both in general for the health of society and our LED and solid-state lighting (SSL) sectors — and specifically related to our plans for Strategies in Light and our Sapphire Awards Gala in August. We will begin to share our conference program details in this newsletter, perhaps as soon as next week. Meanwhile, we did extend the Sapphire Awards entry deadline, but the final deadline is a week away. Get those entries completed.
Our Mark Halper has also written a news story this week tied to the lessening grip of the pandemic on business. Mark’s message was really about a potential upturn in lighting sales in commercial buildings. But the driver of such an upturn would be workers returning to offices after a year of working from home. Mark has cited a number of major companies announcing concrete plans for having offices back in action.
I would also suggest that there are signs that the LED and SSL businesses have taken an optimistic turn. GE Current, for instance, just announced the acquisition of Forum Lighting with the clear intent of expanding its architectural lighting reach. Current will also get an expansion of North American manufacturing capacity as part of the deal.
In the same news article, we also covered the latest financial report by Acuity Brands. Revenue remains down slightly from the start of the pandemic. But net income and operating profit numbers were up slightly.
In a slightly different turn on an Osram-related story, Mark also reported just today that former CEO Olaf Berlien has joined the board of Canada’s LeddarTech — a company in which Osram has a stake, and which contributed an article on the emerging uses of LED-based sensors for lidar applications to LEDs Magazine some years ago.
Earlier I mentioned Strategies in Light, and I also have news about our HortiCann Light + Tech Conference that will take place virtually about a month after Strategies in Light. And yes, I know we just deployed our HortiCann newsletter Monday, and this news should have been in that newsletter. But we learned some things after that deployment.
I’m thrilled to announce that our HortiCann keynote speaker will be Dr. Ricardo Hernandez from the Horticultural Science program at North Carolina State University. Ricardo will present data on studies of how different intensities in supplemental lighting affect cultivars such as cannabis. We will also have a growers’ panel once again as it proved very popular last year.
And in other horticultural lighting news, Current is again involved. The company has announced a partnership with Wageningen University & Research (WUR) in the Netherlands focused on a study of the value of interlighting in vine-centric crops such as tomatoes. Interlighting is another topic that we will have presenters cover at HortiCann in September.
You will find many more stories of interest in the body of today’s newsletter. And always feel free to contact me to discuss content we post or to pitch a contributed article.
- Maury Wright, (858) 748-6785, [email protected]