Acuity Brands announces acquisition of Current horticulture lighting business

On November 27, North American lighting manufacturer Acuity Brands announced that the company has reached an acquisition agreement and will acquire the Arize® series of plant lighting product business from Current Lighting Solutions (hereinafter referred to as "Current Lighting"). In addition, Acuity Brands has reached an agreement with North American distributor Hort Americas to continue to be the exclusive distributor of Arize® products in the United States, Canada and Mexico.

The Acuity Brands-Current Lighting transaction is expected to close in January 2024, at which time the Arize® products will be added to Acuity Brands’ Verjure™ horticulture lighting product line. The Hort Americas agreement will become effective upon completion of the acquisition agreement.

Acuity Brands stated that the Arize® series is a high-power plant lighting product focusing on greenhouse scenes. Through this transaction, the Arize® series will be added to the company's plant lighting product portfolio, expanding the company's plant products into the rapidly growing controlled environment agriculture market.

With the addition of the Arize® range, Acuity Brands will continue to leverage lighting and control expertise to help growers increase productivity while reducing energy consumption in the future. In addition, the company will form an alliance with Hort Americas, a well-known leader in commercial greenhouses, to expand sales of horticultural lighting products.

Acuity B rands increases market layout of plant lighting

Acuity Brands was founded in 2001 and is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. It currently focuses on LED lighting, lighting control, building management solutions and location-aware applications. In fiscal year 2023, it achieved net sales of US$3.95 billion (approximately RMB 28.841 billion) and operating profit of US$473 million.

As a well-known lighting manufacturer in North America, Acuity Brands has not been developing in the field of LED plant lighting for a long time.

In 2022, Acuity Brands announced its official entry into the plant lighting market and launched Verjure™, a professional plant lighting product line for indoor planting scenarios. The Verjure Pro series of LED lamps are specially designed for cultivating vegetables, flowers and other plants, covering the full spectrum range. The products have the characteristics of long life, low power consumption, high photosynthetic photon energy efficiency, etc., and can meet the diverse planting needs of indoor warehouses, greenhouses, vertical farms, etc.

Compared with Acuity Brands, Current has more experience in the field of plant lighting. It has entered the plant lighting market in 2018. The company has provided lighting products for the largest vertical indoor farm in Europe. In addition, Current has also received multiple large orders for plant lighting and is one of the world's well-known plant lighting brands. In recent years, Current has deeply expanded into lighting market segments with larger profit margins, including plant lighting, smart lighting, architectural lighting and UV LED.

Among them, in the field of plant lighting, Current actively carries out industry-university and cross-industry cooperation to promote the application of plant lighting products in more indoor farms and expand the plant lighting product portfolio.
Currently, Current's Arize® product series includes Arize Element Top Light, the world's first LED lamp that can replace 1000-watt high-pressure sodium lamps, Arize Lynk LED lighting device board, Arize Factor ML300 and ML900 and other types of plant lighting products to meet the growth of various types of plants. In recent years, Current has continued to expand its Arize® plant lighting product portfolio and has applied it to urban farms on all continents.

Although Acuity Brands' plant lighting business has been developing for a short period of time, through this acquisition of Current's Arize® product series business, Acuity Brands is expected to grow rapidly in the field of plant lighting in the future. Acuity Brands will be able to expand in the North American market with which it is familiar. In the field, we will increase the promotion of plant lighting products for the cultivation of economic crops such as cannabis and vertical agriculture.

On the other hand, Acuity Brands can also leverage Current's foundation in promoting the Arize® series of products in the European market to introduce the rest of the company's plant product portfolio to the European market, build a reputation in the European plant lighting field, and provide LED lighting technology and products for various plant planting scenarios such as European greenhouses.