In recent years, LED tree has seen the expansion of LED chip market and been gradually raising self-manufacturing degree. Meanwhile, the LED tree package industry, which is already widely established in China to a considerable scale, has also achieved a lot in LED lighting of commercial and residential space besides public space. LEDinside predicts that China’s lighting market will show more remarkable growth in public space and road lighting market along with the second implementation of “10,000 lights in 1,000 cities” project and incentive measures. As for the general and indoor lighting market, mainland China’s manufacturers will have more room to play in both foreign and domestic markets than 2010.
During the LED tree China of International Market Trend and Lighting Applications (LEDforum Shenzhen 2011) organized by LEDinside, we had an exclusive interview with Zhijing Sun, General Manager of, inviting him to talk about their high-speed strategy guided by which it only took 6 months to complete building facilities to putting into production and share the technology development and corporate management strategies behind products all sold out while in full production.
Striving to take the lead in White LED Applications
Mr. Sun told us that Focus LED tree chose to be located in Suzhou Industrial Park, a cooperation project between China and Singapore. The whole project started from April 2010，factory construction from May 22, the first batch of white LED products on Dec 22 by the end of 2010 and put into market in 2011.
Why were they able to establish facilities and start production in such a short time even lacking facilities settlement experiences?
Mr. Sun revealed that he had long been researching into LED. He initially studied LED as a postgraduate then went further study abroad and obtained a doctorate degree in the USA. Later he joined Intel taking positions from engineer to head of R&D department. He then returned to mainland China as the general manager of one famous Chinese LED company. Due to his past working experiences, he had had rich LED industry knowledge and experiences before founding Focus Lightings and acquired solid management basis in practice from previous work in large enterprises. Thus he was able to soon become capable of facilities establishment, management team selection and company operation, speeding up the process from facilities construction to mass production.
He further added that Focus LED tree targeted at the white LED market from the very beginning so all staff with the consensus of highly efficient executive ability made great efforts to realize the goal of quick mass production within 6 months.
Mr. Hua Huang, its deputy general manager also said in LEDinside’s interview that the English name of the company Focus Lightings clearly explains its product positioning is focused on HB white LED products for lighting and backlight. The company also hopes to win recognition from market and customers with its high cost-performance ratio products.
How to Meet Quality Requirements
Mr. Sun’s told us that he had recruited a professional team with returned talents from the USA and Taiwan as well as domestic key LED tree personnel in order to keep quality especially ensure the stable quality all the way from sampling, pilot production to mass production. The talents not only conduct innovative change management and risk control as learned from former work experiences in big companies but also possess production innovation capability to lower market risks for Focus Lightings as far as they can.
He also emphasized that the company had relied on talents from various regions in addition to advanced quality and management concepts in semiconductor industry to streamline the management of quality control and scale production.
How to Manage Quality Control
In light of the equipment purchase, Focus Lightings developed strict principles for LED tree and materials purchase since its founding so as to easily grasp the stability of LED production, and effectively keep a quality supply of equipment and materials, which is more stable than other makers during the LED manufacturing process. Only purchasing mass production proved autonomous equipment can save HR cost and enhance the production mastery to ensure quality control.
Focus Lightings now have 6 MOCVDs, each capable of 20,000 pcs equivalent production of LED chips and wafers. With 6 more MOCVDs to come by the end of 2011, the monthly capacity may reach 40,000 pc. From the establishment of the company, sales of Focus Lightings keep tripling even quadrupling every month. When the maker is running full production, products are soon sold out sometimes even with supply shortage. Mr. Sun expects to reach the sales target of RMB 0.15 billion in 2011.
Product Ranges of Focus Lightings
Mr. Sun pointed out that the white LEDs of Focus Lightings are classified into three types: Type I: 10*23 LED for lighting. When the current is increased to 30 mA, luminous flux can reach 10-12 lm. The luminous efficacy and cooling of the product is already very stable, suitable for 3014 and 3528 package for indoor lighting market. Type II: mass-produced 9*11, 8*15 and 10*18 products, brightness covering 4-7.3 lm lighting market，can be widely used in high-end decorative LED tree, auxiliary lighting and backlight. Type III: mid- and high-power chips to be launched in 3Q.
Future Prospects: LED expected to gradually open up various application markets
For future LED markets, Mr. Sun held an optimistic view on its development, believing that over time all LED tree markets will open to LED products step by step. He noted two things:
On one hand, he remarked that the white LED market obviously tends to expand rapidly, which should be seen as an open blue ocean instead of a regional red ocean. Regarding backlight applications, after 2012, as the pull power of TV backlight will decline and the restrictions of foreign technical barriers to mainland makers will also weaken, backlight market may come to saturation or a sluggish growth. However, for makers based in mainland China, the market has barely started from scratch with great development potential ahead. In regard to LED tree applications, current market has a promising future whether in factory, commercial or general lighting with government supports. Although there is some overheating in the investment of wafers and chips, it is just limited to the supply part. And the demand is still on the rise in the market. With LED price down and cost-performance ratio up, the market will enter a blowout period.
On the other hand, according to Mr. Sun, there is also fierce competition in the open market of white LEDs. However, confident about his own team, he is certain that Focus Lightings is very competitive in white LED tree. The company has not only a strong management team for technology innovation, rapid innovation and scale production but also excellent and stable quality control mode. In the future, Focus Lightings will focus more on enhancing core competitiveness including team, management, technology, quality and brand in order to take the lead in white LED applications.
Perspectives from LEDinside
As the LED tree market competition is turning white hot in mainland China and various LED applications are taking off, the expansion of LED chip production capacity is one of the focuses of China-based makers. With more production expansion and equipment purchase, good quality control and effective management of mass production and yield after capacity increase is the most important task for current China’s LED chip sector. Emerging maker as Focus Lightings is, it is very impressive to see its mass production ability together with the high speed and efficiency in facilities establishment. Plus excellent management, it will have more opportunity to take advantageous position in the LED chip market in future expansion.
