In a further move to strengthen its leading position in the market for LED, Osram today officially opened its LED assembly plant in Wuxi, China. The factory has a floor area of about 100,000 square meters and will employ as many as 2,100 people by 2017. Osram is investing a low three-digit-million euro amount to set up the plant. “With this step, we’re not only expanding our fully loaded backend LED capacities but also boosting our presence in the world’s largest single lighting market,” said Wolfgang Dehen, Chief Executive Officer of OSRAM Licht AG. “Asia, and particularly China, are key growth drivers for the global lighting and therefore the LED industry.”

China accounts for more than 20 percent of the world’s lighting market and has recorded a fast growth over the past years, particularly in terms of the uptake of LED lighting technologies. The size of the country’s total general illumination market was about EUR 15 billion (US $20.52 billion) last year and is expected to rise to about EUR 23 billion by 2019. The market share of semiconductor-based products such as LEDs is forecast to surge to over 60 percent by then compared with only 29 percent in 2013. 

An engineer is standing in front of a machine for product testing at Osram's LED assembly line in Wuxi.(LEDinside/Osram)

With the new LED assembly in Wuxi, Osram will be in an even better position to address that growth. The contracts for the plant’s location were signed in May 2012, with groundbreaking taking place in August that year. “Osram’s new LED assembly plant will play a key role in forging Wuxi’s LED industry value chain, and we believe operation of the plant will help Wuxi to become one of the foremost optoelectronic semiconductor bases in China, and even Asia,” said Wang Quan, Deputy Secretary of Wuxi Party Committee and Mayor of Wuxi.

The factory is planned and run by the Osram Opto Semiconductors business unit. It is the company’s second backend site where LED chips are turned into light sources by assembling them into housings. The other site is located in Penang, Malaysia. Osram Opto Semiconductors also operates chip production sites (frontend) in Regensburg, Germany, as well as in Penang. The Wuxi plant will be capable of an annual output of up to several billion LEDs.

“Our business has always been a global business, and taking into account the size and growth prospects of the Chinese market, Wuxi is a perfect fit for our manufacturing footprint,” said Aldo Kamper, CEO of Osram Opto Semiconductors. “The plant will help us to further develop our professional know-how and understanding of our customers’ products to create even more added value for them.”

Osram has been active in the opto semiconductor business for more than 40 years and today develops and manufactures LED components for industrial applications, entertainment electronics, the automotive sector and general lighting. The product range also includes infrared diodes and semiconductor-based lasers. Osram Opto Semiconductors is headquartered in Regensburg and employs more than 7,000 people worldwide.