The time has come for Edison’s bulb to make way to LED lighting
• Lighting • Interview • South-East European INDUSTRIAL Мarket - issue 2/2013
Mr. Iliya Veselinov, CEO & Co-Owner of Octa Light Bulgaria
Dear Mr. Veselinov, Octa Light Bulgaria is а producer of powerful high-brightness diodes and LED lights for indoor and outdoor use. What does the offered range include and what elements do you use in production?
Octa Light Bulgaria is the only producer of powerful LEDs, whose R&D and production is entirely in Europe. In 2011 we opened a factory with a completely European production line for powerful diodes for K2 housing and the only one in Bulgaria light laboratory for quality assurance of produced goods.
In its two year advance, Octa Light Bulgaria developed and started the production of 13 new LED types, including powerful high contrast and small-powered LEDs and the so called COB /chip on board LED technology/. This put us next to the international producers with a large range of LEDs to use in various industries: general lighting, interior lighting, household appliances, LED displays and screens, indicator lights, UV diodes, car industry diodes etc.
In addition to the LEDs, Octal Light Bulgaria produces LED luminaires covering the full application range, such as street lights, exterior lights, interior lights for offices, hospitals, schools, industry, sports facilities.
It’s a very important fact that apart from the Business-to-Business sector, Octal Light is about to enter people’s homes through its ’Iris’ series - LED ceramic bulbs with extremely elegant design in more than 40 variances according to the socket, power and color temperature.
By what technological innovations your products compete with those of foreign companies?
The design of the new 13 LED types is developed and owned by Octal Light Bulgaria, applying a number of innovations in the field of primary optics, thermal management and specifics in the base, making our products competitive on global level. We work with leading international companies, such as DOW CORNING, for mutual testing and development of new materials used in the semi-conductor industry. A number of our novelties are patent protected and others have pre-patent research for inventions, but to a large extent also protected by our own know-how.
Octal Light Bulgaria also attracts the interest of a number of specialists from the semi-conductor industry on an international level, such Mr. Marcello Della Pia, specialist in chip construction at SemiLEDs, Director SMIC, who is currently a member of our Board of Directors, and Mr. Pino Spalma, VP Customer Operations North America and Europe Axcelis Technologies, currently our VP Corporate Sales. The goal of Octa Light Bulgaria is to offer products, complying with all international and European directives for energy efficiency and environmental protection!
The product range of Octa Light Bulgaria in the field of LEDs, LED modules and LED luminaires was met with great interest at the EUROLUCE 2013, where we were the only Bulgarian company having a booth at the expo. It’s not by chance that the design specialists of Bertone Group, working for Pinot Farina, Lamborghini and Ferrari, were interested and stated their readiness to work with us.
How do you evaluate the present situation on the LED lights market in Bulgaria and Europe?
The energy resources of the planet decrease and the global warming becomes bigger issue. And currently we are witnessing an international financial crisis. Due to all these reasons, sufficient by themselves, restrictive directives are created regarding the energy in an international aspect. The LED market is directive related in the whole world. In this sense Octa Light Bulgaria, as our partners say, is in the right place at the right time. The energy efficient products business is something like mutual love between producer, distributor and client, brings mutual satisfaction and then things happen. Of course the road is not easy, we constantly strive to establish ourselves trough quality and prices, but also to have our own distinguishable face.
Is the present moment suitable for investments in technological and technical equipment? What are your plans in that direction?
In the high-tech business it is impossible to have stagnation in the area of product update. This is equal to suicide. Octa Light Bulgaria constantly upgrades its product range of LEDs, LED modules and LED luminaires and this is possible thanks to the reasonable investments in high-tech equipment. Currently apart from the production line for the 14 types of LEDs, we also have a most modern production capacity for PCB SMD assembly, equipped by leading international companies, such as SIPLACE, DEK, HELLER. This is also our guarantee for quality of the offered LED modules and has made us an interesting contractor for brands such as Swarovski, Hella Italy, Debbas Group and many other.
What are your current projects?
Octa Light Bulgaria is focused mainly in the following two directions:
Business-to-business sector. For that purpose we have a project team of young but very professional specialists with excellent qualification acquired in various European countries, which provide complete LED lighting solutions, so that all European norms for the respective sector are covered, whether administrative buildings, street and park lights, hospitals, sports facilities, textile, agriculture, pharmaceutical, cosmetic industries and others. As a vertically integrated company Octa Light Bulgaria cares for its clients and puts all its potential in high efficiency and stability of LEDs, starting from the LED and going through the luminaire design, which is not a goal, but a function of light distribution and thermal management, and getting to the right lighting i.e. light hygiene and lack of overexposure. Unfortunately most of our current projects are for European countries, not for the domestic market. We can also say that now Bulgarian companies in various industries also started to be active in regard to energy efficiency.
Business-to-consumer. This is new extremely important direction for our company and a main priority for 2013. We talk about all private users of LED bulbs, tubes, indoor and outdoor lights. The luxury today is not furniture, but everyone to be able to afford good sufficient light with significant economy of electric power. This can also avoid the worrisome tendency of depressive conditions due to lack or insufficient lights, noted even in countries with very developed economy, such as Germany, Norway, Denmark etc.
What are your next plans?
We at Octa Light Bulgaria believe in the principle ’Don’t praise the goods, praise the market.’ The research shows that the rapid market growth of our sector comes from three distinct tendencies:
1. The achievements of LED light technology, which allow energy efficient and affordable projects for replacing the existing light systems;
2. The programs for energy efficiency introduced by many utility companies trough financial stimuli for incorporating LED light systems;
3. Growing interest among the industrial companies and office buildings’ owners in applying sustainable lighting and modernization, which saves money for the business.
The time has come for Edison’s bulb to make way to the new generation - the LED lighting. The revolution has started in the business sector and will continue in households.
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