News

9 November 2009

 

Cree buys plant in China; Huizhou joins LED City program

LED chip, lamp and lighting fixture maker Cree Inc of Durham, NC, USA has agreed to buy a 592,000-square-foot facility in Huizhou, Guangdong Province in southern China. The facility will be Cree’s first chip-fabrication plant outside North America and is targeted to also house future expansion of components manufacturing.

Already, more than half of Cree’s 3172 staff work in China, mostly at its existing packaged high-brightness LED manufacturing plant in Huizhou, which it gained with the $207m acquisition in 2007 of Hong Kong-based COTCO Luminant Device Ltd.

“This investment enables us to expand our presence in China and demonstrates our commitment to serving the growing demands of both our local and global LED customers,” says chairman & CEO Chuck Swoboda. “We are building on a solid foundation in Huizhou with a strong local management team and a history of manufacturing excellence.”

Cree recognizes the support of Huizhou’s party secretary YeBin Huang and mayor RuQiu Li during the site selection process. “Solid-state lighting is a key strategic green industry for China,” says Huang. “From the government’s perspective, we will do our best to support Cree through government projects as well as government policies,” he adds. “This investment will be a win-win project for Cree and China’s SSL industry.”

Previously, in September, Cree raised $434m in a public offering of common stock, for use for potential strategic investments as well as anticipated capital expenditures of about $150m in fiscal 2010 (to end-June 2010). Subsequently, in early October, Cree announced plans to add 575 jobs: 275 at its existing chip fab Durham facility by the end of 2009 and a further 300 in North Carolina by the end of 2012.

Also, Huizhou is joining the Cree LED City program, an international community of government and industry parties initiated in December 2006 to evaluate, deploy and promote LED lighting for municipal infrastructure. Huizhou joins existing program members Raleigh, NC, Ann Arbor, MI, Austin, TX, Anchorage, AK, Indian Wells, CA, Fairview, TX and Danville, VI in the USA; Toronto and Welland in Canada; Tianjin in China; Gwangju in South Korea; and Torraca and Apecchio in Italy.

Huizhou has already completed several trials of LED streetlights and is in the process of deploying LED streetlights in the ZhongKai Hightech Industrial Zone.

“We are very proud to be the first city in southern China to join the Cree LED City program,” says RuQiu Li. “Energy saving and emission reduction are our city's priorities for sustainable development; we will continue to drive the adoption of the SSL products through government initiatives.”

See related item:

Cree’s revenue grows 14% to record $169m

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Visit: www.cree.com