🔒Bright Outlook: Demand for energy efficient, versatile lighting fuels Milford manufacturer Q-Tran’s growth

The next several months promise to be busy for Q-Tran, says Jim Binch, co-CEO and chief operating officer of the Milford-based lighting manufacturer.

The company, which produces linear LED lighting systems, plans to launch a new family of products in the fourth quarter, followed by additional product innovations in early 2023.

“Revenue was up 25 percent last year,” Binch said. “And we expect it’ll be up between 35 and 40 percent this year.”

Those numbers reflect a growth trajectory that the company has been on since 2014, when it transitioned from being solely a power supply company for halogen lights to a manufacturer that has married its power systems to custom-built linear lighting for commercial and high-end residential clients.

Linear lighting, as opposed to square or round lights, is LED technology packaged in a long, narrow housing that distributes light more evenly over an area. They are often used in venues like offices, restaurants, hotels, museums and retail stores.

And with new government energy efficiency standards and shifting consumer demand for eco-friendly lighting, the market for LED solutions is bright.

This past April, the Biden administration announced new efficiency standards for light bulbs that, according to the Department of Energy (DOE), will save consumers nearly $3 billion annually and reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 222 million metric tons over 30 years.

Grant View Research market data projects the LED lighting market, valued at $55 billion in 2021, will grow annually by more than 10 percent between 2022 and 2030.

Green investment

Q-Tran’s high efficacy LED light engines use 25% less energy than fluorescent tubes and have a lifetime that is three times longer, according to the company. Q-Tran’s products also achieve more than 70,000 hours of light, says Gean Tremaine, company president, whose father founded the business in 1993.

That duration of efficiency and functionality — both for internal and external lighting — is attractive to architects, landscape designers, interior designers and electrical engineers who Q-Tran sells to directly.

Tremaine says the versatility of Q-Tran’s linear lighting systems — from their ability to form different shapes, colors, dimming effects and more — have made the company’s lighting designs popular for high-end projects. The company’s lights have been used by The Smithsonian, Motion Picture Association and San Francisco International Airport.

Each light is custom-made at the company’s 55,000-square-foot facility in Milford, which includes 38,000 square feet for production and 17,000 square feet of administrative space. It’s home to roughly 80% of the company’s 100 employees. The company also has a small office in Compton, California.

Binch says state funding (including $300,000 in direct and $650,000 in indirect support) helped Q-Tran invest in equipment to become the first company in the country to encapsulate LED lighting, an industry innovation that contributed to the firm’s rapid growth.

In July, the firm hosted Gov. Ned Lamont as part of an announcement by the state of a new ClimateTech (CT) Fund — made possible with federal dollars through the American Rescue Plan Act’s State Small Business Credit Initiative — that will invest in supporting early-stage businesses with a focus on clean energy, environmentally-safe manufacturing and climate resiliency. The program's $100 million in funding will be administered by Connecticut Innovations (CI), the state’s venture capital arm.

“We are broad in our approach to the sector, but excited to see companies focused on energy, mobility, food tech, water and waste, as well as other categories,” said Konstantine Drakonakis, venture partner for Connecticut Innovations’ ClimateTech Fund. “We plan to invest in 15 to 20 companies over the life of the fund and we have close public and private partners in the state to help us identify and grow companies in Connecticut.”

Sustainability and eco-friendly innovations are key focus areas for Q-Tran. The company estimates it recycles about 62,000 pounds of cardboard and 7,000 pounds of copper, aluminum and light iron annually to minimize waste.

“We are making a huge push in our sustainability effort,” said Tremaine. “Our main focus is on material transparency and we offer all the recycling information for all our products so people can dismantle and recycle them.”

The firm also offers customers the Q-Tran Take Back Initiative, through which clients can mail back a Q-Tran product at its end of life and the company ensures it will be recycled in an environmentally-responsible way.

“We want to avoid things just going into a landfill.” Tremaine said.

But it’s not only the company’s environmental stance that’s driving business; it’s also Q-Tran’s innovations. Since 2019, the company has released a handful of new lighting innovations into the market, including its Micro 5 flexible fixtures in 2021, which allow for a variety of bend options, and are suitable for indoor and outdoor use in wet or dry locations.

They are half the size of existing products in the market, but still provide the same quality of light. In fact, the company won an Illuminating Engineering Society’s Progress Award for the technology.

The company also released its Warm Dim LED technology that imitates a wide range of color temperatures. At full power, it provides bright lighting for a task-oriented environment, but when dimmed, creates a warmer, more inviting atmosphere.

Such innovations helped Q-Tran weather a temporary slowdown in business at the outset of the pandemic — as many projects were temporarily halted — but still finished 2020 with revenue up 6 percent.

Over the past four years, the company has averaged a 21 percent revenue increase and is currently on track for $40 million in annual sales.

Both Binch and Tremaine are bullish on the company’s future. They expect to add six new people to their 14-person R&D team to continue to drive innovation. They are also infusing app-based technology to control and automate lighting through both Apple and Android devices.

Binch says one of the company’s next focus areas is hallway lighting for medical and educational facilities.

“There are [collectively] thousands of miles of hallways in hospitals and schools,” Binch said. “And we want to be in that space.”