A joint venture between Straits Lighting and Uitenhage - based automotive headlights manufacturer Hella, wowed a global business audience at the recent Hanover trade fair in Germany with its Envirolight 57 "extremely energy efficient streetlight."

The companies were part of a trade mission organised by the Eastern Cape Development Corporation (ECDC) to the renowned Hanover fair which included battery manufacturer Eveready and Enza.

"The Envirolight 57 is a South African designed energy efficient streetlight solution using automotive headlight technology. The light is designed to provide effective streetlighting while saving up to 70 percent of the energy used by lights currently being used around the world."

"The light has an IP66 rating from the South African Bureau of Standards (SABS) which is the best one can get for street lighting applications," says Straits Lighting financial director John Rice.

The Envirolight 57 generated so much interest that it is being tested by countries around the world including Energy Australia, Ireland, Germany, Slovekia, Canada, United States of America, Uganda, Angola and Germany amongst other countries for compliance. It has already been tested successfully throughout South Africa.

Rice says the interest in the product at the fair led to a memorandum of understanding with a successful Egyptian company involved in smart metering to work jointly on their products. A further 35 countries expressed a "serious" interest in purchasing this product.

ECDC trade promotion head Zodwa Kepeyi says that the current global energy crisis and the potential dangerous outcomes of global warming, "call for innovative solutions to the energy crisis."

"We are extremely excited that South African companies like Straits Lighting and Hella are taking the lead in pioneering energy efficient solutions to relieve the pressure on energy resources,

"We continue to support promising Eastern Cape businesses to access and market their products in foreign markets and to create strong ties with their counterparts elsewhere around the world," says Kepeyi.

Rice says that the technology used in the patented Envirolight 57 is proven having already being used successfully in the motor industry.

The Envirolight 57 is a replacement for and outperforms the popularly used 70W HPS, 80W MV and 125W MV lamp based luminaries.

He explains that the Envirolight 57 uses a standard 57W compact fluorescent lamp with properties needed for a streetlight. It offers a lamp life of up to 20 000 hours and a lamp output deterioration of less than 10 percent over its full life.

Currently used lamps can deteriorate by up to 50 percent over their lives. The Envirolight 57 also re-strikes immediately after power restoration.

He says its manufacturing capacity is about 20 000 lights per month "but this can easily be increased on demand."

The theme at this year's fair which attracts some 300 000 visitors, was on energy, power and automation organised around 21 exhibition halls with an estimated 5 000 exhibitors.

Rice adds that they met an exceptional array of high level executives and "ECDC went further by organizing a radio interview for us that gave us an opportunity to broadcast our product over a large German radio network."

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For more information contact:

Zodwa Kepeyi

Telephone 043 704 5713

Cellular 083 451 1759

Email nkepeyi@ecdc.co.za

Angela Church

Telephone 043 704 5750

Email achurch@ecdc.co.za

For ECDC media relations:

Lunga Mtshizana

Telephone 043 726 8833

Cellular 083 618 7557

Email lunga@smgafrica.com