Budding Opportunities for Horticultural Lighting on the Horizon

April 17, 2019
Growth in the Grow Lights Market

Every year, when I see the big Bradford pear tree flowering in my front yard in late March or early April, I know that spring has sprung. Although these beautiful blooms only last a couple of weeks during what seems to have become an ever-shrinking springtime season in Missouri, the predictable announcement of their existence certainly makes a bold statement. After reading this month’s cover story along with the latest research on horticultural lighting and the future of grow lights, I suspect LEDs hold a similar promise in controlled environment agriculture (CEA) applications — poised to make a consistent mark on this sector in the not-so-distant future. When you consider that approximately 95% of the current global CEA market is made up of legacy lighting (such as high-pressure sodium, metal-halide, and fluorescent), that leaves a whole lot of room for LEDs to make their presence known.

According to Strategies Unlimited, the horticultural lighting market will grow more than 180% in the next five years, with LED comprising the majority of this growth. Other industry experts share in that projection, maintaining that LEDs could be a game changer in the grow lights business. Providing a host of benefits, including increased energy efficiency, minimal heat production, long life, light spectrum tunability, and controllability, LEDs offer a uniquely favorable approach to sunlight-free or -restricted plant production. 

Taking a closer look at the latest developments in horticultural lighting, Freelance Writer Tom Zind examines how and why the blossoming LED market could deliver big opportunities for lighting manufacturers, designers, and contractors in the cover story (starting on page 20). In this special report, Zind explains that although LEDs have been punching through barriers to adoption in many lighting applications, they currently represent only a miniscule part of horticulture’s lighting mix. “Their comparatively high up-front cost, combined with a traditionalist mentality and wariness of new technology in the producer community, has left LED stalled, but coiled on the fringes of the traditional greenhouse market for both new and replacement lighting,” writes Zind. “But as LED prices fall and more becomes clear about its energy efficiency and other qualities that can benefit producers, this lighting choice is starting to make inroads into a market that could be on the cusp of a breakout.”

A recent report by Research and Markets, “Horticulture Lighting Market by Technology, Application, Cultivation, Lighting Type, Offering, and Region - Global Forecast to 2023,” takes a similar stance, estimating that the overall horticulture lighting market will grow from $2.43 billion in 2018 to $6.21 billion by 2023 at a compound annual growth rate of 20.61%. Drilling down a bit, Strategies Unlimited predicts a steady pickup in LED adoption among U.S. cannabis producers over the next few years. Accounting for an estimated 10% of the 6.2-million-square feet of lighting deployed in cannabis operations in 2017, the research group forecasts LEDs will account for 45% of installed lighting by 2022. It also sees the average price per square foot for installing LEDs in North American vertical farm operations falling from $15.72 this year to $13.48 in 2022, and square footage of North American vertical farm lighting of all kinds totaling 20.2 million-square-feet by that time, up from an estimated installed base in 2017 of 1.3-million-square-feet. 

It remains to be seen if and when these forecasts will come to fruition — and to what extent LEDs will be adopted and implemented into CEA applications — but it will definitely be exciting to watch just how much ground LEDs gain in the grow lights market. With everything we’ve learned so far, the signs certainly seem to be in LEDs’ favor. 

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