Guangzhou International Lighting Fair: Illuminating China’s Lighting Industry on the Road to Globalization
Guangzhou in October, still overflowing with the enthusiasm of the end of summer. In this international metropolis known as China’s “South Gate”, the annual Guangzhou International Lighting Expo (hereinafter referred to as “Light Asia”) is on schedule. As one of the most influential events in the global lighting industry, this exhibition, which was founded in 1996, has gone through nearly thirty years, witnessing and promoting the whole process of China’s lighting industry from catching up to running in parallel, and then leading in some areas.
I. History of Lighting Asia Expo: A History of China’s Lighting Industry
The origin of Light Asia can be traced back to the mid-1990s, when China’s lighting industry had just started and most enterprises were still in the workshop production stage. At that time, China’s lighting industry had just started, most of the enterprises were still in the workshop production stage, the products were mainly simple incandescent lamps and fluorescent lamps, and the first exhibition in 1996 had only one pavilion, with less than a hundred exhibitors and mainly foreign brands. At this stage, the Light Asia Exhibition is more of a window for international lighting companies to display their products and explore the Chinese market.
The turning point came at the beginning of the 21st century. With the maturity of LED technology and the rise of China’s manufacturing industry, the Lighting Asia Expo ushered in a period of rapid development. 2005, the exhibition area exceeded 50,000 square meters, and the number of local Chinese exhibitors for the first time exceeded the number of foreign-funded enterprises. This change marks the beginning of China’s lighting industry from “manufacturing” to “intellectual” transformation.
The period from 2010 to 2019 is the golden decade of Light Asia Expo. The scale of the show continued to expand, peaking at 200,000 square meters with more than 2,600 exhibitors. During this period, China became the world’s largest producer and exporter of lighting products, and Guangya Expo jumped to become one of the largest and most influential professional exhibitions in the global lighting industry.
The show was briefly impacted by the 2020 epidemic, but the organizers quickly innovated the exhibition mode by launching a “dual-line exhibition” that integrates online and offline. 2023 saw the show return to its offline format, and the number of visitors reached a record high. This October’s show is expected to attract more than 3,000 exhibitors and 150,000 professional visitors.
Second, the globalization springboard of China’s lighting companies
For Chinese lighting companies rooted in the local community, the Lighting Asia Exhibition has long exceeded the significance of an ordinary exhibition, but has become an important fulcrum of the enterprise’s globalization strategy.
First of all, the exhibition is a technology wind vane and product touchstone. Every year during the exhibition, major enterprises will release annual new products and the latest technology. For small and medium-sized enterprises, this is the most efficient platform to understand industry trends and grasp the pulse of the market. The person in charge of a well-known lighting company said, “We will put the most competitive new products on the debut of the Light Asia Exhibition every year, and decide the direction of subsequent mass production through market feedback.”
Secondly, the exhibition is the best stage for brand internationalization. With the improvement of technical strength of Chinese lighting enterprises, more and more enterprises start to shift from OEM production to brand export. Guangya Exhibition gathered buyers from more than 100 countries and regions around the world, providing Chinese lighting brands with an excellent opportunity to directly face international customers. According to statistics, the proportion of foreign trade orders reached directly through the exhibition to the total turnover has been increasing year by year, and has reached 45% in 2023.
Thirdly, the exhibition is an important hub for industry chain collaborative innovation. Lighting industry involves light source, power supply, heat dissipation, optical design, intelligent control and other technical fields, which requires the close cooperation of the whole industry chain. Lighting Asia not only displays finished products, but also covers the whole industry chain from raw materials, components to finished products and solutions. This complete display system provides a platform for in-depth exchanges and collaborative innovation for enterprises upstream and downstream of the industry chain.
It is particularly worth mentioning that in recent years, Chinese lighting companies in the intelligent lighting, health lighting and other emerging areas of outstanding performance. These innovations have gone global through the Light Asia Exhibition, changing the international market’s stereotypical impression of Chinese lighting products as “low-priced and low-quality”. A focus on intelligent lighting enterprise CEO said frankly: “through continuous years of participation, our brand awareness in the international market has increased significantly, the unit price of the product has also doubled.”
III. Strong magnetic field for attracting foreign investment
Light Asia is not only a bridge for Chinese lighting enterprises to go out, but also an important platform to attract foreign investment input. This attraction is reflected at multiple levels:
The most direct is to promote foreign investment in China’s lighting industry. Various types of investment seminars and investment promotion meetings held during the exhibition provide a convenient channel for foreign enterprises to understand China’s lighting industry policy and investment environment. According to incomplete statistics, in the past five years through the exhibition platform to reach more than 200 foreign investment projects, the cumulative investment amount of more than 5 billion U.S. dollars.
Second is the increase of technical cooperation and joint venture projects. With the enhancement of China’s lighting industry technology level, foreign enterprises and Chinese enterprises are also changing the mode of cooperation, from the initial simple technology introduction, and gradually shifted to joint R & D, technology swap and other deeper level of cooperation. The International Lighting Technology Summit held during the exhibition has become an important occasion to facilitate such cooperation.
The third is the equity investment of international capital in Chinese lighting enterprises. In recent years, a number of Chinese lighting companies have gained the capital injection of well-known international investment institutions, and many of these investments were initially approached and eventually reached during the Light Asia Exhibition. A lighting enterprise responsible for international private equity investment said: “The investor initially learned about our technical strength and market prospects through the exhibition.”
It is worth noting that the direction of foreign investment is also changing: from the early manufacturing, and gradually shifted to R & D design, brand operations and other high-end links. This shift and China’s lighting industry transformation and upgrading of the trend coincides with the formation of a positive interaction.
IV. New Highlights of the 2024 Exhibition
According to the information disclosed so far, this October’s show will feature the following highlights:
The deep integration of intelligent lighting and the Internet of Things has become the biggest attraction. With the popularization of 5G technology and the deepening of the application of Internet of Things, intelligent lighting has been upgraded from a single product function to a system solution. This exhibition will set up for the first time “smart city lighting zone”, focusing on displaying lighting facilities in the smart city construction of new applications.
The concept of healthy lighting continues to heat up. In the post epidemic era, people’s attention to the relationship between light environment and health has increased significantly. A number of thematic forums on healthy lighting will be held during the exhibition to discuss cutting-edge topics such as photobiological effects and rhythmic lighting.
The theme of green low-carbon is more prominent. Under the goal of “double carbon”, the demand for energy saving and consumption reduction in the lighting industry is becoming increasingly urgent. This year’s exhibition will focus on displaying a new generation of energy-efficient lighting products and technologies, while introducing for the first time the “Product Carbon Footprint” labeling system to help buyers understand the environmental impact of products.
Cross-border e-commerce has become a new focus. In order to help lighting enterprises to cope with the challenges faced by the traditional foreign trade model, the organizing committee of the exhibition and a number of cross-border e-commerce platforms, the establishment of “cross-border e-commerce special zone for lighting products”, to provide enterprises with the whole chain of services from the platform to the operation and promotion of the platform to be stationed.
V. Looking ahead
Standing on a new historical starting point, the Light Asia International Lighting Exhibition will continue to play its role as an industry wind vane and resource integration platform. For Chinese lighting enterprises, how to make good use of this platform to realize the transformation and upgrading from “products going to sea” to “brand going to sea” will be the key to future development.
On the one hand, enterprises need to increase technological innovation, especially in intelligent lighting, health lighting and other emerging areas to form core competitiveness. On the other hand, we need to focus on brand building and marketing, change the past heavy production, light brand development mode.
For foreign companies, China’s lighting market is still full of opportunities. With the advancement of urbanization and the continuation of the trend of consumption upgrading in China, the demand for lighting products will continue to grow. Foreign-funded enterprises can take advantage of the platform of Light Asia China to understand the characteristics of the Chinese market, find suitable local partners and realize win-win development.
As a senior industry observer said, “The Lighting Asia Expo is like a mirror that reflects the development of China’s lighting industry and also predicts the future direction of the industry.” In this most important stage of the global lighting industry, Chinese lighting companies are writing a new chapter from catching up to leading.
It is foreseeable that with the increasing internationalization of China’s lighting industry, the international influence of LightAsia will continue to expand. This professional exhibition, which originated from the Pearl River, will continue to illuminate the road of globalization of China’s lighting industry and inject new vitality into the development of the world’s lighting industry.