- Deal secures China's lamp production
- By Zhang Lu(China Daily) Updated: 2006-04-28 07:01
US eele Laboratories LLC and a Hong Kong-invested lighting appliance manufacturer, Beijing Aihua, signed a technological deal yesterday to mass-produce multi-functional, high-pressure lamps for projectors in Beijing.
"The advanced technology from eele Laboratories will help us solve technical problems in the mass production of high quality high-pressure lamps," said Michael Ko, director and CEO of Beijing Aihua.
Aihua introduced a high-pressure lamp production line from Europe in 2002. Prior to that, the high-pressure lamps used in projectors were mainly imports from multinational lighting producers such as Philips and Osram.
Aihua's production volume remains low due to some technical problems, however.
"We will invest 50 million yuan (US$6.24 million) to upgrade the production line in accordance with eele technology," said Ko.
The bulb in eele's new projection lamp system can be replaced easily when it is dead. While the traditional projection lamp needs to be completely restored before it works again.
This difference means the bulbs for eele's system are about US$30-70 each, costing much less than the traditional ones, which are priced at around US$200-350 each.
"The lower costs involved and its ease of use for end-users will help boost the growth of the projector market," said Karlheinz Strobl, president and CEO of eele Laboratories.
According to Zhao Handing, an official from the China Video Industry Association, the development of projection TVs is inhibited by high costs. He expects the new products being made through co-operation between eele and Aihua could help to solve this problem.
Aihua plans to produce 50,000 high-pressure lamps this year.
And the annual production volume will reach 800,000 within two years, Michael Ko told China Daily.
However, these volumes will only meet a small part of market demand. Statistics show China's projector market is growing by 60 per cent year-on-year.
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