In a further move to strengthen its position in the LED market, Germany’s Osram has officially opened its LED assembly plant in Wuxi, China. The factory has a floor area of about 100,000m2 and will employ as many as 2100 staff by 2017. Osram is investing a low three-digit-million euro amount to set up the plant. “With this step, we are not only expanding our fully loaded backend LED capacities but also boosting our presence in the world’s largest single lighting market,” says Osram Licht AG’s CEO Wolfgang Dehen. “Asia, and particularly China, are key growth drivers for the global lighting and therefore the LED industry,” he adds.
China accounts for more than 20% of the world’s lighting market and has recorded fast growth over the past few years, particularly in the uptake of LED lighting technologies. The country’s total general illumination market is expected to rise from about €15bn in 2013 to €23bn by 2019, while the market share of semiconductor-based products such as LEDs is forecast to surge from only 29% to more than 60%.
With the new LED assembly in Wuxi, Osram says that it will be in a better position to address that growth. The contracts for the plant’s location were signed in May 2012, followed by groundbreaking that August. “Osram’s new LED assembly plant will play a key role in forging Wuxi’s LED industry value chain, and we believe operation of the plant will help Wuxi to become one of the foremost optoelectronic semiconductor bases in China, and even Asia,” stated Wang Quan, deputy secretary of Wuxi Party Committee and mayor of Wuxi.
Planned and run by the Osram Opto Semiconductors business unit, the factory is the firm’s second back-end site where LED chips are assembled them into packages, adding to the existing site in Penang, Malaysia. Osram Opto Semiconductors also operates front-end chip production sites at its headquarters in Regensburg, Germany, as well as in Penang. The Wuxi plant will be capable of an annual output of up to several billion LEDs.
“Our business has always been a global business and, taking into account the size and growth prospects of the Chinese market, Wuxi is a perfect fit for our manufacturing footprint,” reckons Osram Opto Semiconductors’ CEO Aldo Kamper. “The plant will help us to further develop our professional know-how and understanding of our customers’ products.”