Apparently, for the past few years, the world has witnessed an explosion in population. This outburst, paired with rapid climate change, has resulted in enormous food demands that call for more compact yet innovative ways of farming, such as Indoor, Greenhouse, vertical farming, and others. The advent of these urban farming methods again brings along the need for Horticulture lighting to suitably cater to the lighting needs even in places devoid of natural sunlight.
The technology is nothing less than a miracle to the farmers hoping to revamp their production without entirely leaning on the daylight. Moreover, the growing propensity for home-grown fruits and vegetables has prompted the need for more grow lights in recent years.
Probably it is why the horticulture lights, commonly known as Grow lights, have indicated an upsurge in their sales. Taking statistics into account, the market for Horticulture Lighting Market globally seems to grow at a CAGR of around 21.1% between 2022 to 2027, says Markntel Advisors. Moving further, let us dive deep, unfold the market dynamics, and explore the predominant areas of applications for these lights.
What Exactly Is Horticulture Lighting?
Horticulture mainly deals with ornamental plants, garden crops, fruits, and vegetables. And artificial lights deployed to enable photosynthesis in such settings, when lacking natural daylight, are referred to as Horticulture lighting. These lights demonstrate the steady adoption in numerous urban farming applications to upscale the plants' growth. Since this practice requires specialized lighting, usually a mix of different wavelengths needed for plant development, the manufacturers focus on several parameters that help measure the optimal lighting and photosynthetic photon flux (PPF).
Unraveling The Market Dynamics for Horticulture Lighting
In 2022, Signify, a Grow lights behemoth, finally acquired Fluence, one of the brands from AMS OSRAM. The acquisition seems to bolster the global Agriculture lighting growth platform and extend the position of Signify in the alluring North American horticultural lighting industry.
In Oct 2020, California LightWorks announced its MegaDrive, a new professional grow light system, which claims to facilitate precise outcomes while drastically lowering both up-front & long-term operating costs. Besides, the new system constitutes a central power unit joined to a series of up to 30 LED fixtures in one chain. The best part is, High voltage three-phase power can connect straight to the central power unit, eliminating power drops to each fixture.
In September 2020, Valoya, one of the key Grow light manufacturers, extended its RX-Series line of greenhouse LEDs with the two latest models - RX500 & RX600, argued to be producing minimal shading over the canopy. Also, equipped with an Ingress Protection rating of IP65 (wet location), these luminaires are purely dust-tight & can demonstrate omnidirectional fight spraying with water jets.
In 2019, Osram Licht AG announced a horticulture LED line with broader purple and white spectra. The purple LED produces red and blue spectral energy conducive to photosynthesis.
Growing Farm-To-Table Trends
Access to local food in cafeterias, restaurants, fast food outlets, and other sites has become hassle-free and flexible with the introduction of the farm-to-table concept. As a result, local foods are beginning to acquire popularity in several areas within the hospitality sector and are likely to do so further. Thus, the necessity for such grow lights that enable timely product delivery in farm-to-table restaurants have arisen in the last few years.
Farming Methods Illustrating the Adoption of Such Lights
Popular methods exhibiting the steady incorporation of such lights include Greenhouse farming, vertical farming, and Indoor farming. However, Vertical Farming has attained the maximum revenue shares and is foreseen as the prime contributor to the industry.
Thanks to its remarkable capacity to cope with erratic land use and environmental change. Because there is less space available in urban settings for producing crops, they are best suited for urban farming, which facilitates industry growth. Besides, the minimal soil and water requirements indicated by vertical farming led to improved agricultural production that prompts market expansion by necessitating more grow lights.
On the other hand, Greenhouses are giving edge competition to Vertical farming as they independently control the temperature and keep plants from dying, making them compatible with plants that don't require special care and stable climatic conditions. Probably this is the reason why it is the most sought-after farming method.
Wrapping Up
With the advent of modern farming practices demonstrated by the urban setups, the farmers are constantly looking for the tools and equipment that uplift the yields and facilitate farming by reducing the dependency on environmental change. In this regard, the grow light has come to the rescue and seems to cater to farming needs. Also, the increased deployment of such lighting in numerous agricultural applications, including urban farming, supplemental lighting, cultivation without daylight, and multilayer cultivation, provides the necessary impetus to the market in the coming years.