LED plant lighting, when will spring come again?

The once-popular plant lighting has cooled down.

According to the research of LEDinside, the optoelectronic research division of TrendForce, benefiting from the promotion of national policies and the mass introduction of LED plant lighting equipment in the North American medical and recreational cannabis cultivation market, the global plant lighting LED market will show explosive growth in 2020, with an output value of 301 million US dollar, an annual increase of 57%.

This wave of growth momentum will continue into the first half of 2021. From chips to packaging to terminals, LED plant lighting-related manufacturers have achieved outstanding revenue in the first half of 2021.

However, since the second half of 2021, the horticultural lighting market has been cold, and some LED horticultural lighting manufacturers have begun to slow down their production plans and material stocking efforts.

Now, the time has come to 2022, has the plant lighting market improved? Is plant lighting a temporary trend or a long-term trend?

Demand is "unpopular", and the development of plant lighting is hindered

From the demand side, plant lighting is actually an "unpopular" business. This is mainly manifested in two aspects:

One is the "unpopular" crop type. Although the current application of plant lighting products has widely covered various varieties such as vegetables, fruits, herbs, flowers, animal and plant breeding, ornamental, etc., plant lighting has not formed a large-scale demand in other cultivation fields except industrial hemp. , which has also led to the market size of plant lighting being deeply affected by policies-in the third quarter of 2021, in addition to the lack of cores (power driver ICs) and shipping schedules, North America’s illegal indoor marijuana growers will not be affected. The blow also affected the shipment performance of terminal products to a certain extent.

The second is the "unpopular" application scenario. At present, the recognition and acceptance of LED plant lighting technology by terminal growers has reached a high level, and the willingness to use LED plant lighting is becoming stronger and stronger. However, there are still three key problems in LED plant lighting that need to be solved urgently:

1. Cost. The one-time investment of LED plant lighting is relatively high, and in the later operation, electricity bills will become an unignorable link in the proportion of terminal growers’ expenditures. the main concern ahead.

2. Crop quality. The use of LED plant lighting does not necessarily mean an improvement in quality for crops. Taking lettuce as an example, according to the current research level, lettuce produced by plant factories has high water content and low nutritional content.

3. The degree of intelligence. Including light source, air environment, nutrient solution, plant growth, etc., the demand for intelligent regulation of plant lighting is very strong. However, whether it is international or domestic, whether in greenhouses or plant factories, the intelligence of LED plant lighting still needs to be improved, and the existing facilities still require a certain number of personnel to participate in the operation, which indirectly improves the The investment cost of LED plant lighting.

Based on this, the application scenarios of plant lighting in China are mainly in areas with harsh climates, such as border troops stationed, desert areas, places where plant landscapes need to be built, and home planting scenes.

All in all, it will take time for plant lighting to become the norm in agricultural production.

Technology "peaks" that need to be climbed together

In the final analysis, the problem facing plant lighting is actually: technology. The improvement of technology can bring about a decrease in cost, which can further promote the expansion of application scenarios and market scale, and the increase in market acceptance can stimulate the enthusiasm of capital, which in turn can be turned into a driving force for technological progress.

However, LED plant lighting is the product of multidisciplinary and organic development of biology, facility horticulture, vegetable science, plant physiology, plant nutrition, biological environmental engineering, LED lighting, intelligent control technology, etc. A set of high-yield, high-quality LED Plant light sources or lamps need to solve the problem of the integration and development of intelligent regulation of light environment, plant photobiology, and LED semiconductor technology at the same time.

This also means that the threshold for the plant lighting market is relatively high. Despite this, the investment enthusiasm of LED companies is very high, from chip manufacturers such as Epistar, Sanan Optoelectronics, Huacan Optoelectronics, Ganzhao Optoelectronics, Zhaochi Semiconductor, to ams Osram, Samsung LED, CREE LED, Seoul Semiconductor, Packaging suppliers such as Lumileds, Tiandian Optoelectronics, Hongli Zhihui, Jinko Electronics, Ruifeng Optoelectronics, Tongfang Optoelectronics, Lideda, Xuyu Optoelectronics, etc., and then to power supply companies such as Maoshuo Power, Songsheng Co., Ltd., and For terminal manufacturers such as Zhongke Sanan, Signify, Fluence, etc., plant lighting has become one of the key layout directions of LED companies.

At the same time, the multi-disciplinary nature of horticultural lighting also makes LED companies attach great importance to cooperation with upstream and downstream enterprises and scientific research institutions, in order to complement each other's advantages and jointly plan the future of horticultural lighting.

The combination of Chinese Academy of Sciences and San'an Optoelectronics, Mulinsen and the Botany Center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the China Institute of Urban Agriculture are extremely clear examples.

Among them, Sanan Optoelectronics itself has deep technical reserves in light formulation research, and the sales amount of its plant lamp chips from January to June 2021 will reach 29 million yuan.

The cooperation between Sanan Optoelectronics and the Chinese Academy of Sciences can be traced back to 2014. At that time, the Institute of Botany of the Chinese Academy of Sciences signed an agreement with Fujian Sanan Group, the parent company of Sanan Optoelectronics, to cooperate in the construction of plant factories; ")formally established.

It is reported that Zhongke Sanan uses the research and development achievements in the field of plant science of the Institute of Botany of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, combined with Sanan Optoelectronics LED light source technology, to carry out the industrialization of photobiotechnology and apply it to the fields of modern facility agriculture and biopharmaceuticals. At present, Zhongke Sanan has successfully built a number of plant factories. In March 2021, Zhongke Sanan also built a 725-square-meter plant factory at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center to ensure the fresh vegetables of the astronauts at the launch center. supply.

Internationally, on November 6, 2021, UL and Seoul Semiconductor signed a cooperation framework agreement on the three LED lighting technologies of SunLike, UV LED and horticultural lighting. Expand extensive and in-depth cooperation.

It is reported that Seoul Semiconductor is at the forefront of the plant lighting market in the world. In terms of PPE, taking 3030 products as an example, Seoul Semiconductor's white light PPE can reach 3.1umol/J, and red light PPE can reach 4.0umol/J; and UL has also targeted plants. The field of lighting has introduced a system-level standard that systematically studies the light formulation of plant lighting and the light environment including flowering, pollination, HVAC, etc.

ams OSRAM also regards plant lighting as one of the important directions of development. At present, ams OSRAM has a wide range of red, blue and white horticultural lighting LED products, which can be applied to top lighting, inter-plant lighting and vertical farm lighting.

In July 2021, Fluence, a horticultural lighting company under ams OSRAM, announced a partnership with BFG Supply (BFG). Integrated solutions for horticultural lighting.

But on December 20, 2021, ams OSRAM announced that it would sell the Fluence plant lighting system business and brand to Signify for US$272 million (approximately RMB 1.734 billion). Despite this, horticultural lighting is still one of the important development directions of ams OSRAM, which stated that it will continue to consolidate its leadership in the red, blue and white horticultural LED market.

The "outlet" is still there, the future is bright

LED plant lighting is an innovative application in the field of agricultural semiconductor lighting.

In the domestic market, although LED plant lighting started late, it has developed rapidly and has the potential for promotion and application in facility horticulture, livestock and poultry breeding, fishery and plant protection. At the same time, under the trend of agricultural intelligence, modern information technology and equipment are in-depth cross-border and integration with agriculture. As an indispensable and important link in the intelligent agricultural ecosystem, LED plant lighting has unlimited future growth space.

In the international market, the legalization of medical marijuana cultivation has a great driving effect on plant lighting. At present, six states in North America have implemented the legalization of medical marijuana cultivation, and Thailand is about to become the first in Asia to promote medical marijuana cultivation. Legalized countries will then drive a new round of demand. At the same time, the demand for supplementary light in greenhouses for tomato, strawberry, flower, leafy and other crops in Europe is also increasing year by year.

LEDinside, an optoelectronic research division of TrendForce, pointed out that the penetration rate of LED in facility agriculture is increasing. In 2022, the global LED plant lighting market will grow by 10.4% to reach US$1.85 billion, with a compound growth rate of 13.0% in 2021-2026.

On the other hand, the era of non-standard plant lighting is gradually coming to an end.

Internationally, in August 2019, the horticultural lighting equipment safety standard UL 8800 was officially released; on September 15, 2020, DLC released the official version of the plant lamp V2.0 standard, which was implemented on March 21, 2021. In China, in November 2020, the "Technical Specifications for the Quality Evaluation of Greenhouse Plant Fill Lights" was officially implemented; in December 2021, the National Standardization Administration issued the "National Standardization Administration on the issuance of the fourth batch of recommended countries in 2021". Standard Plan and Notice of Foreign Language Version Plan of Related Standards”, a total of 584 national standard plans have been issued, including the “Technical Report on Plant Growth LED Artificial Light Environment”.

It can be seen that from technology to application to market specification, plant lighting is moving towards maturity. In the future, LED plant lighting solutions will play an important role in solving the impact of limited land resources and unstable climate on agriculture and harvest stability, with huge development space. (Text: LEDinside Lynn)

Reprinted on LEDinside