Urban lighting refers to urban functional lighting and urban landscape lighting of urban roads, tunnels, squares, parks, public green spaces, scenic spots and other buildings in urban planning areas. In the current new development period, it also includes the smart light pole industry.

Urban functional lighting

1. Promising prospects

In the 70 years since the founding of the People's Republic of China, China's social and economic development has achieved extraordinary achievements that have attracted worldwide attention. The urbanization rate has also increased from 10.6% in 1949 to 64.7% in 2021. However, it is still far from the urbanization rate target of 80% in developed countries. Quite a distance, which also means huge room for development. It can be said that urbanization construction is one of the core driving forces of my country's modernization construction, especially the new urbanization construction promoted by the country at this stage, which also provides new development opportunities for market expansion and industrial upgrading of urban lighting.

2. Considerable potential

Road lighting dominates urban functional lighting. The length of my country's urban roads will be close to 500,000 kilometers by 2020, and there will be more than 30 million road lighting lamps. The basic market demand is quite huge. It has maintained a growth rate of about 5% in the past five years, and the increase is relatively stable. With the With the deepening of new urbanization construction, the demand for high-quality urban road lighting will also further increase.

According to statistics from my country's street lighting management department, among China's road lighting application products, the mainstream product is still high-pressure sodium lamp. After years of ebb and flow of substitutions, LED lighting products still account for only 30%. This reflects that in the field of road lighting, China There are still more than 20 million street lights that are not LED, and globally, the penetration rate of LED street lights is even lower, no more than 15%. Therefore, whether based in China or looking globally, LEDs account for a high proportion of the incremental market, but they still have great replacement potential in the larger stock market.

3. Industrial Structure

From the perspective of the market structure, some changes have taken place in recent years. Some of the leading companies ten years ago have gradually declined in the fierce market competition. Companies represented by Huapu Yongming and others focus on R&D and manufacturing, and adopt innovative operating models that directly face manufacturers rather than end users, and have achieved considerable development; while the Gaoyou Street Lamp Industry Cluster has experienced rapid development in recent times. , forming an industrial agglomeration of urban lighting manufacturing, supply chain and integrators, and closely linked to the engineering terminal.

The urban lighting industry in Gaoyou, Jiangsu Province originated in 1976. After 45 years of development, there are now more than 1,000 lighting fixtures and poles-related manufacturing companies, including more than 30 companies with sales of over 100 million, and emerging companies such as Longteng, Chengxu, Industry leaders represented by Hyundai and Bode. Gaoyou was awarded the honorary title of "China Street Lamp Manufacturing Base" by the China Lighting and Electrical Appliances Association in 2008. Currently, its road lighting products account for about 30% of the national market, and its light pole products account for 70% of the national market.

The current structure can be summed up as "two concentrations and one decentralization", of which "one concentration" refers to the birth of some leading street lamp companies, including Huapu Yongming, Unilumin, Sansi, Longteng, Hyundai, Jinghe, Jingri, and Lianyu , Asia, Debon, Samsung and other large-scale enterprises; "another concentration" is the formation of related manufacturing and supply chain concentration areas represented by Jiangsu Gaoyou, driven by some leading enterprises such as Longteng, Chengxu, Hyundai, etc., and many Industrial clusters where small and medium-sized enterprises gather. "One decentralization" means that the overall industrial concentration of the street lighting industry is still low, which is similar to the pattern of the entire lighting industry. In the street light market size of about 30 billion, the above-mentioned leading companies are still rare, and there are currently no companies with a billion level. There are only a handful of companies with a 500 million level, and there are small and medium-sized enterprises with sales in the tens of millions. The number is huge and they occupy an absolute majority. However, as the urban lighting market demand evolves towards complexity, customization and fragmentation, the requirements for enterprises’ R&D, manufacturing, services, branding, etc. will be further enhanced. In the future, the competitiveness of leading enterprises will also be strengthened, and the increase in industrial concentration will also be of high quality. the inevitable result of development.

Smart light pole

1. Emerged at the historic moment

Since 2020, "two new and one important" (i.e. new infrastructure, new urbanization construction, transportation, water conservancy and other major project construction.) have become the top priority in my country's investment field. The smart light pole industry conforms to the general trend of new infrastructure and smart city construction, and is developing in full swing in China. First of all, "multiple poles in one, one pole with multiple uses" is the integrated utilization of multiple urban resources, and is also based on the concept of future smart city construction. Its construction is conducive to urban management cost reduction and efficiency improvement, and is an inevitable trend for high-quality urban development in the future. . The light pole is a carrier, which is characterized by being widely and evenly distributed in the city; it is also an electrical terminal with a certain height. In the context of smart city construction, which requires global sensing and interconnection of everything, light poles are also excellent carriers for sensors that collect data.

2. Policy driven

Since the country began to promote the construction of smart cities in 2012, the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development has released three batches of smart city pilot lists. The total number of pilot cities has reached 290, which provides many development opportunities for enterprises engaged in smart city-related businesses. In 2019, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission jointly issued the "Implementation Opinions on Promoting the Co-construction and Sharing of Telecommunications Infrastructure to Support the Construction of 5G Networks", requiring telecom companies and tower companies to intensively use social tower resources to build new micro base stations and reserve 5G site sites in advance. resource. At the local level, Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, Chongqing, Guangdong, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Hebei, Shaanxi, Fujian, Hunan, Sichuan, Anhui and other places have successively introduced relevant policies to promote the "multi-pole integration, one pole" of various types of urban poles and towers. "Multi-purpose" smart light pole construction.

It can be seen that both the central and local governments have a layout in the field of smart light poles. As smart light poles with urban public facility attributes, policies will play a core driving role in their construction.

3. Huge market

Smart light pole projects are under the investment background of the country's promotion of two new and one heavy construction. In 2020, there will be about 200 related projects, with a total investment scale of nearly 50 billion yuan, and the average price of project targets has also jumped from the previous tens of millions to hundreds of millions. According to relevant data, China currently has nearly 30 million light poles, and there are also 15 million other poles such as video surveillance poles and communication poles. However, the penetration rate of smart light poles is still quite low, so the development potential is huge.

4. Development status

As an overall smart city infrastructure, smart light poles are expected to realize the co-construction, sharing and co-governance of information infrastructure. However, as an emerging thing, there are still many problems that need to be solved, such as technology/business cross-border, business cross-department, planning, design and specific construction process, business model exploration and standard system construction.

At present, street lamps, light poles and control system companies are the leading force in promoting the application of smart light poles. From an enterprise perspective, the construction of smart light poles will generate multiple revenues, such as manufacturing, installation, energy saving, operation and maintenance, advertising, charging, rent, data, etc., which may bring added value. Manufacturers and operators have different value demands. For most manufacturing companies in the lighting industry, it is difficult for them to have the ability to integrate, but they can actively invest in research and development to expand industrial application scenarios and functions as needed, form patents through R&D and manufacturing advantages to enhance core competitiveness, and improve themselves to seek integration. In addition, the model of "joining together to go overseas" with products from companies at each end of the industrial chain is also worthy of encouragement.

For operators such as engineering companies, in addition to taking advantage of their own specialization and familiarity with the road to win project projects, they must also consider expanding their business formats, from engineering contractors to comprehensive urban service providers, and seeking sustainable development. . It is worth mentioning that in the urban lighting industry of Gaoyou, the "China Street Lamp Manufacturing Base", its lamp pole products are more competitive than its lamp products, accounting for 70% of the national market share. Based on this industry advantage, there are currently quite a few A large number of Gaoyou companies are active in the smart light pole industry.

As a carrier for information collection, processing and release, smart light poles can not only save urban space and beautify the city's image, but also integrate urban resources and improve operational efficiency. In the future, the smart light pole industry will gradually develop into a mature stage of specialization in demand, standardization of design, and diversification of applications. Related companies in the value chain will also face historical development opportunities.

urban landscape lighting

Driven by the deepening of my country's urbanization process, increasing market demand and large-scale events, urban landscape lighting has experienced rapid development in the past few years since 2016. It has become a hot spot for capital and has also driven the business of related manufacturers in the industry chain. However, in its rapid development process, many problems have also arisen, such as excessive lighting, light interference/light intrusion, one-size-fits-all projects, uneven project quality, large advances and accounts receivable, and sustainable development.

In view of this, at the end of 2019, the Central Education Leading Group on the theme of "Don't forget the original intention, keep the mission in mind" issued the "Notice on Rectifying the Issues of "Performance Projects" and "Face Projects" such as Excessive "Landscape Lighting Projects". The core is to put an end to excessive Lighting and performance/face-saving projects, The level of urban landscape lighting should be compatible with the economic and social development and cultural temperament characteristics of the city itself. The impact of the sudden COVID-19 epidemic in early 2020 was mainly reflected in the stagnation of project construction and difficulties in business expansion, which led to a decline in the overall operating performance of the industry. At the same time It also has a certain adverse impact on project acceptance and payment collection.

At the same time, related companies in the field of landscape lighting engineering have entered the transformation track. Some of them are transforming cultural tourism night tour projects, others are transitioning to smart city construction, and some are doing both. The direction of cultural tourism night tour is in line with the country’s development trend of vigorously promoting culture and tourism economy to meet the people’s growing needs for a better life. It is also an extension of urban landscape lighting, which has strong engineering design, construction and service capabilities. For lighting engineering companies with rich project experience, it can be said that it is relatively easy to transform in the direction of cultural tourism and night tourism. As for smart light poles and even smart city construction, as a cross-technology, cross-disciplinary, cross-format, cross-department comprehensive industry, multiple industries are involved. It involves a wide range of areas and has no precedent to follow. All ends of the value chain are at different levels. In the initial stage of "crossing the river by feeling for the stones", participating in it will face many challenges.

Looking to the future, first of all, the central regulation documents refer to excessive lighting and image projects, and do not prohibit urban landscape lighting. As my country's comprehensive national strength continues to grow, the social economy continues to develop, the urbanization process continues to deepen, and the masses' demand for a better life Still booming, the market demand for urban landscape lighting still exists in large quantities. In addition, in October 2020, the Global Lighting Association (GLA) also released the "Nighttime Lighting: Position Statement on the Importance of Quality Lighting and Nighttime Maintenance" (click to view the full text), pointing out that high-quality outdoor lighting is owned by lighting designers and lighting installations. is the joint responsibility of the manufacturer and operator as well as the lighting manufacturer. It is also the consensus of the global lighting industry to advocate the realization of high-quality urban nighttime lighting through good design and the selection of high-quality products.

In the post-epidemic era, first of all, the state’s investment in the two new industries and one major investment has not diminished. “Small but sophisticated” cultural and tourism night tour projects have also sprung up. As an important means of stimulating domestic consumer demand, landscape lighting will still develop in cities. Playing an important role in the night-time economy, this industry will still have good development prospects. What the industry needs to do is to better combine the lighting design technology with the cultural and artistic content of interpretation, so that landscape lighting can truly become a good helper that embodies the urban spiritual core, promotes urban culture, and stimulates the urban economy.

In addition to the manufacturing advantages described above, Gaoyou, the "China Street Light Manufacturing Base", is also quite competitive in the field of lighting engineering. As of now, there are only 196 companies in the country that have both the "Special Class A Lighting Engineering Design" and "Class A Professional Contracting of Urban and Road Lighting Engineering" qualifications. In Gaoyou City Lighting such as Longteng, Chengxu, Shenzhou, and Baode Led by leaders in the engineering field, Gaoyou, as a county-level region, holds 13 of them, on par with Beijing, a municipality directly under the Central Government. This also means that Gaoyou has urban lighting integrators like Longteng and Chengxu that can provide full-process services covering urban lighting solution design, product development and manufacturing, engineering construction and installation, and project operation and maintenance. This makes them a leading player in urban lighting. The field has considerable comprehensive competitiveness.