Plant lighting has become one of the hottest lighting segmentation fields in recent years, and many lighting industry chain enterprises have entered the market. However, after the rapid growth of plant lighting market driven by cannabis cultivation in North America in 2020, the demand for plant lighting will continue to decline from the second half of 2021, due to factors such as maritime transport and illegal cannabis cultivation.
So, what's the market trend in the past year? After experiencing sharp fluctuations in the market, how do industry chain enterprises upgrade their plant lighting business, gain a foothold in the increasingly competitive plant lighting market, and welcome the arrival of greater business opportunities in the future?
The demand for plant lighting is getting warmer, and North America and Europe are still the main sources of orders
After the sluggish demand in the second half of 2021, the plant lighting market is gradually recovering. Although the market demand is not as hot as that of the same period last year, in the first half of this year, the industry chain enterprises still reaped a relatively stable recovery growth in the plant lighting business.
Huacan Optoelectronics, an LED chip enterprise, said that after the market demand for plant lighting slowed down in the second half of last year, the demand in the first half of this year has gradually recovered from the bottom. Downstream customers are optimistic about the continued recovery of the market demand for plant lighting in the second half of this year. The feedback of some downstream chip enterprises on the plant lighting business also verified the fact that the market demand is gradually recovering.
In terms of packaging enterprises, Luminus, Tiandian Optoelectronics, Lidda and Jinko Electronics all said that the company's plant lighting business was growing gradually. The demand mainly came from the hemp growing market in North America and Europe, and the orders from the Thai hemp growing market also began to increase gradually. Jingke Electronics said that the demand for plant lighting applications has the same periodicity every year. Among them, the first and fourth quarters are low demand seasons, and the second and third quarters are peak seasons. Therefore, the downstream demand is strong in the second quarter, and the orders for plant lighting products of Jingke Electronics begin to increase.
Maoshuo Power, a power supply enterprise, said that the company's plant lighting business orders continued to grow, and the demand came from the company's main customers.
Xinnuofei, a lighting enterprise, also pointed out in the financial report of the first quarter that the plant lighting business in the United States had a strong performance, driving the nominal growth of its digital solutions business sales by nearly 24%.
It is worth noting that Xinnuofei completed the acquisition of Fluence, a plant lighting factory, in May. This transaction has begun to have a positive impact on the growth of Xinnuofei's performance. In the second half of the year, with the continuous growth of medical cannabis demand in North America, Fluence's revenue is expected to increase.
From the market situation in the first half of the year, in the short term, the main demand for LED plant lighting still comes from the hemp cultivation in North America and the greenhouse market in Europe. In addition, after the legalization of hemp cultivation was announced in June, the demand for plant lighting from Thailand also gradually increased.
In the long run, due to the shortage of food supply and land resources in the context of global population growth, as well as the continuous optimization of plant lighting technology and cost, the demand for plant lighting in plant factories and greenhouse agriculture will continue to increase.
TrendForce Jibang Consulting pointed out in the 2022 Global LED Lighting Market Analysis Report-2H22 that although the legalization of cannabis in North America slowed down, the market in China fell sharply, and the growth of plant lighting market slowed down, the market size is estimated to be 1.79 billion US dollars, with an annual growth of 6.6%, in response to the increased demand for LED equipment replacement in greenhouses in Europe, and under the stable price of lamp products., It is estimated that the market size of LED plant lighting will be 1.79 billion US dollars in 2022, with an annual growth of 6.6%.
Looking to the future, in the context of food safety and global climate change, smart agriculture is increasingly being put on the agenda of governments of all countries. In addition, the legalization of marijuana continues to promote, and the future LED plant lighting market demand will maintain a steady growth trend. TrendForce Jibang Consulting estimates that the market size will reach 2.89 billion dollars in 2026, and the compound growth rate will be 11.5% from 2021 to 2026.
Although the sources of short-term and long-term demand for plant lighting have been relatively clear, the key factor for enterprises in the industry chain to achieve sustainable development in the field of plant lighting is whether their plant lighting products can meet the needs of terminal planting and improve the input-output ratio of enterprises and end users. Especially after the high demand stage, more and more players are entering the field of plant lighting, Enterprises need high-quality products to win a place in the increasingly competitive plant lighting market.
Packaging enterprises continuously improve lighting efficiency, reliability and cost performance to meet the planting needs of various scenes
Whether it is the cultivation of cannabis or plant factory or greenhouse, its core demand can be summarized as the rapid harvesting of high-quality crops at the lowest cost. Therefore, the core requirements of downstream or end customers for plant lighting products are usually inseparable from high luminous efficiency, high cost performance and high reliability, in order to maximize the input-output ratio.
At present, LED packaging enterprises have launched a rich product portfolio to meet the application needs of downstream customers and terminals, and continue to improve product performance. Guoxing Optoelectronics, Ruifeng Optoelectronics, Yuanke Optoelectronics, Tiandian Optoelectronics, Hongli Zhihui, Smyder, Zhongshun Semiconductor, Lidda, Jingke Electronics, Luminus, Ames Osram, Cree and other LED packaging manufacturers at home and abroad have launched a number of series of products.
Size:
Most manufacturers have launched 2835, 3030, and 3535 size products, featuring high reliability, high performance price ratio, and high light efficiency. Some manufacturers have also introduced 5630 and 5050 products with larger sizes to improve light efficiency and heat dissipation.
In addition, according to different application requirements, manufacturers apply packaging supports and substrates made of different materials, including PCT materials with high temperature resistance, high reflectivity and low moisture absorption, EMC materials with high air tightness, high temperature aging resistance, high UV attenuation resistance, and ceramic substrates with good heat conductivity and corrosion resistance, to cope with the complex environment of plant planting.
In addition to providing products with different sizes and supports made of different materials, the Smyder under Hongli Zhihui also adopts a special coating process to ensure product reliability, which further improves its vulcanization resistance.
Spectrum:
As different plants have different needs for light at different growth stages, LED plant lighting products launched by manufacturers not only cover the range of photosynthetically effective radiation of 400~700nm, but also extend to ultraviolet and infrared bands, covering the full spectrum.
Among them, Ruifeng Optoelectronics has launched a series of PC color conversion products with rich light colors, including green, mint, lime, amber and red. The overall plant lighting products cover 400~760nm bands.
Cree's J series 2835 color LED products also cover 14 light colors, including PC Mint, Photo Red, Far Red, and PC Purple.
Luminus has a very comprehensive LED product line, covering multiple packaging platforms including medium power series, high power 3535 SMD series and COB series; Plant lighting products cover the full spectrum from 280nm (UVB/UVC) to far red light (730nm).
However, it is worth noting that the application matching scheme mainly promoted by the enterprise is mainly focused on high power white light+red light. According to the research of TrendForce Jibang, this is because the red light plus white light scheme has been used in more and more greenhouses, so the manufacturer has also constantly introduced new products to meet the demand.
Photosynthetic Photon Energy Efficiency (PPE):
According to lighting manufacturer Zhongke San'an, the technology of plant lighting products is mainly reflected in the improvement of light efficiency. The photosynthetic photon energy efficiency (PPE) of the whole lamp applied in vertical farms has increased from 2.4 umol/J in 2021 to 2.7 umol/J at present, and is expected to rise to 3.0 umol/J by the end of this year.
With the continuous improvement of the requirements of terminal application scenarios on lamp performance, packaging enterprises have also introduced high luminous efficiency products to support plant lamps to achieve higher performance levels. Generally, the PPE value of plant lighting beads is 1~4 μ In the mol/J range, packaging manufacturers have always been trying to break this limit, especially in the popular white light and red light products in the market.
Ames Osram's high-power LED product series OSLON ® Square, its Hyper Red lamp bead reaches 4.16 under 700mA current μ Mol/J, the photoelectric conversion efficiency (WPE) is up to 76%.
Cree's new plant lighting product Photophyll Select increases the PPE of broad-spectrum lamps to 3.25 μ Mol/J, increased by 6% compared with previous schemes, and lumen and luminous efficiency (LPW) of lamps increased by 17%.
Domestic manufacturers are also actively catching up, among which Ruifeng Optoelectronics, Hongli Zhihui and Lidda have all raised the PPE of red light bulb products to 4 under the current of 700mA μ Mol/J above; Raise the white light product PPE to 3 under 60 or 65mA current μ Mol/J above.
Summary
Although the current market demand is not as strong as that of the same period in the past year or two, the industry chain enterprises have not lost confidence in the plant lighting market. They are still optimistic about the future development of the industry, and are looking for ways to develop the future plant lighting in different ways. For example, packaging enterprises win sales by product quality through continuously enriching product portfolio and continuously improving product performance. Drive power supply and terminal lighting enterprises speed up the industrial layout through product research and development, capacity construction, application and promotion, etc.
It can be seen that the temporary slowdown of market demand has given the plant lighting industry a chance to move towards a more mature direction. During the calm period of the market, enterprises in the industry chain have more in-depth discussion and research on product optimization and effective application, so as to make full preparations before the arrival of greater demand and promote plant lighting products to play a more important role in the future agricultural planting and breeding.
