Illuminated signs group Kadouri and Sol-ar-eco Ltd. have set up a joint subsidiary named Sol-R-Led, at a value of NIS 6 million. Kadouri owns more than 50% in the new company, which serves as an integrator of outdoor lighting products.
Kadouri is providing the money for Sol-R-Led, committing to invest NIS 3 million in the venture, while Sol-ar-eco is providing its smart control system, based on a controller it developed, which it says can carry out historic clinical analysis and energy balance calculations for any given point in the world. The company can check the factors required to produce lighting in outside installations anywhere in the world, in different climatic and topographical conditions.
Sol-R-Led is actually a contemporary incarnation of Optilight, which between 1997 and 2007 carried out R&D on solar lighting, employed 35 workers, and closed, its founders claim, because it was ahead of its time.
Sol-R-Led CEO is Areal Amiri, who also serves as Kadouri VP of business development. Sol-R-Led's VP business development marketing is Zeev Dror, its product manager is Moshe Schwartz, and one of the shareholders is Optilight founder Menahem Philicovsky. Dror says that Philicovsky "was a pioneer, who as early as the 1970s worked on LEDs and the design of controllers."
"Globes": How do your products, which are based on photovoltaic cells, promise lighting on sunless days?
Dror: "Our installations, whether they are billboards, outdoor lighting, mail boxes, or house numbers, have batteries that store energy for 11 days, so that the sign will light up and be seen even after 11 sunless days."
How much of the package that you supply as an integrator is a product of your own development?
"First, the controller. If I need to set up activity in Munich or in India, I can program the controller to work there on the basis of the available energy at that point.
"For example, there is less in Finland than in India. The controller's calculations have to be different in the two locations. We make the controller and LED rulers, which are responsible for the light dispersion, and we buy the other components."
As for Sol-R-Led's business, Amieri says that the company already has orders worth more than NIS 1 million, on the basis of Sol-ar-eco's activity, and he expects turnover to reach NIS 3 million by the end of the year.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on March 24, 2010
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