Manufacturers of LEDs offered the Ministry of Industry and Trade to strengthen control over public procurement of lighting equipment

Manufacturers of LEDs offered the Ministry of Industry and Trade to strengthen control over public procurement of lighting equipment. According to market participants, despite the obligation to apply Russian solutions, suppliers using Chinese LEDs win tenders. Manufacturers offer to introduce LED labeling or launch a resource where luminaire manufacturers will upload data. The authors of the idea admit that the cost of lamps can grow, but not more than 10%. But consumers emphasize that Russian LEDs are several times more expensive than Chinese ones. In their opinion, on the contrary, it is necessary to cancel the requirement to use domestic products.

The GS Group told Kommersant that at the session of the “Consortium of Design Centers and Enterprises of the Radio-Electronic Industry” of the AKRP on May 25 and at the meeting of the RSPP commission on the radio-electronic and electrical industry on May 17, the possibility of tightening control over public procurement of fixtures was discussed. As the company explained, the main problem is that the number of produced Russian lamps does not correspond to the volume of purchases of domestic LEDs.

Manufacturers of lamps make a certain batch of equipment on Russian LEDs in order to enter the register of the Ministry of Industry and Trade, the GS Group specified: “But after that, companies buy Chinese counterparts and supply such lamps as part of public procurement.”

Participants in the LED market, say GS Group, offers the Ministry of Industry and Trade to label their products. Another option is to create an online system that compares the number of purchased LEDs with the number of produced fixtures. The lighting marking experiment was planned to be launched in April (see “Kommersant” dated February 27).

Evgeny Dolin, GR director of IIC BL GROUP (manufacturer of LEDs and lighting devices), confirmed that the idea is being discussed and shared by other market participants: “In the absence of stricter control, it will be more difficult for Russian LED manufacturers to sell their products, which will entail losses.” Now, according to an interlocutor in one of the Russian manufacturers, the ratio of domestic and Chinese LEDs in public procurement is estimated at about 1 to 10.

At meetings with the Ministry of Industry and Trade, they came to the conclusion that it is necessary to create an online resource for monitoring the purchases of domestic LEDs and oblige all manufacturers of lamps to upload data there, said Dmitry Anikin, director of RuSID LLC.

According to him, the introduction of control will raise prices for lamps by 7-9%, but in the absence of it, the Russian market “may completely switch to cheaper Chinese counterparts, which will lead to the closure of domestic LED production.”

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Industry and Trade assured Kommersant that they had not yet received requests from companies asking them to tighten control over tenders and devices purchased by Russian companies: “Upon receipt of relevant proposals, they will be considered together with interested federal executive authorities and manufacturers.”

On average, a Russian LED is two to three times more expensive than a Chinese counterpart, says Kommersant’s interlocutor in the lighting market: “The average cost for an Asian LED with a case type of 2835 is 0.64 rubles, and the Russian counterpart is 5 rubles. Asian companies ask for an average of 12.6 rubles for the case 5050, Russian companies – 24 rubles. According to a Kommersant source, tightening control over government procurement of LEDs will negatively affect the implementation of state programs on energy efficiency of enterprises. He believes that, on the contrary, the obligation for government customers to buy Russian LEDs should be removed.

“If control over the use of Russian LEDs in fixtures supplied under the state order is not tightened, and even more so if the requirements for the use of domestic LEDs are softened, we will be forced to stop production, record and write off losses,” insists Vice President for Production Development at GS Group Fedor Boyarkov. In 2020, GS Group invested about 300 million rubles. to launch the production of LEDs in the Kaliningrad region.

Timofey Kornev