CORK FIRM SIGNS BIG DEAL

Lighting up the peas in a supermarket freezer is a more complicated – and more lucrative – business than you might think. Cork technology company, Nualight has signed a deal worth €5 million over two years with Tesco to provide energy-efficient lighting for all the refrigeration systems in the supermarket chain’s global operations.
Its value could grow to €10 million in 2013, Nualight chief executive Liam Kelly told the Sunday Times. The deal will add another 25 jobs to the company’s existing 55 and they hope to be employing more than 100 in the next three to four years.
Nualight has developed a new form of semi-conductor-based lighting technology to illuminate freezers. The Nualight system is much more efficient than fluorescent tubes in the fridge environment, Kelly said. The tubes don’t last long and their alternative also saves energy because it emits less waste heat.
The company, which is selling into 20 countries, makes its products in Cork and at Michigan in the US. Assembly has been outsourced to Romania and Hungary. In Europe Nualight is going head-to-head with Philips while General Electric is its main competitor in the US. “We are much more focused than either,” Kelly said. “We don’t have conflicts of interest – we don’t make the light bulbs our technology is replacing.”