Taiwan LED light show warmly received in U.K.

An exhibition of Taiwanese LED lighting products in the United Kingdom has received a warm welcome, the show's organizer, the Taiwan Trade Center in London, said Friday.

The organizer said the LED products' quality and designs earned high praise from visiting U.K. vendors, and it expected that Taiwan's share of the British lighting market would grow in step with rising global awareness of the need for energy efficiency. The show, held at the Gusu Art Gallery in western London, featured a number of top Taiwanese LED makers, including Navitas Green Energy, Qisda Corp., G-LED, Yantouch Corp. and Lumineco Technology. The indoor and outdoor LED lighting products on display appealed to potential customers because of both their lighting functions and their decorative designs, the organizer said. Chang Siao-yue, Taiwan's representative to the U.K., told CNA at the exhibition that Taiwan's LED lighting products were very competitive in the global market because of their innovative qualities, outstanding design, and attractive pricing.

Because of those features, Chang said Taiwan's LED lighting sector had great potential for growth in the U.K. market and expressed confidence that Taiwan's products would gain in popularity in Britain as more effort was made to promote them. According to Chang, Taiwan currently ranks as the second largest LED lighting manufacturer in the world, and she said the island hoped to become No. 1 by 2015. Peter Hunt, chief executive officer of the Lighting Association in the U.K., said at the show that as competition in the U.K. LED lighting market has grown fiercer, consumers there pay most of their attention to quality, energy efficiency and pricing. After visiting the exhibition, Hunt said Taiwanese firms were heading in the right direction, and he believed they had a good opportunity to penetrate the U.K. market.

According to Hunt, Royal Philips Electronics is currently the largest LED lighting supplier in the U.K. Among the exhibitors, Navitas, established by Taiwanese investors in the U.K. in 2007, has hired a group of designers in Britain and outsourced the designs to companies in Taiwan to be manufactured. David Kao, a senior executive with the company, said Navitas hoped to take advantage of Britain's design strength and Taiwan's production technology to gain an edge among British consumers.