Ireland’s oldest lighting company to invest €25m in ‘lighting as a service’ business.
A 58-year-old Dublin business, ECI Lighting, is to invest €25m in what it believes is the future of clean energy technology driven by the internet of things (IoT) and in doing so, will create 20 new jobs in the UK and Ireland.
ECI Lighting was established in 1960 by the Hanratty family and has grown over almost 60 years to become one of the leading suppliers of lighting products in Ireland and the UK.
‘The positive environmental impact this investment will create is something which we can all be proud of’
– DECLAN HANRATTY
The company is privately held and distributes to more than 150 wholesale channel partners from its Dublin, Cork and Belfast offices.
Positively glowing
The company’s in-house architectural lighting design team has delivered more than 500 projects, such as RCSI in Dublin (RIAI Ireland’s Favourite Building 2018), Trinity College Dublin, Dublin Institute of Technology Grangegorman, Dublin Port, St Vincent’s Hospital, Oracle EMEA HQ (Lighting Project of the Year 2018), The Law Society, Deloitte and Dublin Airport.
The funding is to be primarily used to facilitate commercial clients in upgrading their existing lighting systems to energy-efficient LED technology, but it is envisaged that other clean energy technologies will also be offered in conjunction with the three-year vendor finance partnership deal.
ECI Energy Ltd has been incorporated to offer Irish and UK customers ‘lighting as a service’ (LAAS) retrofits, ECI energy monitoring and verification software, and intelligent IoT lighting control systems, which will be fully funded, installed and maintained for up to five years.
The energy savings generated (up to 75pc) will cover the costs of the turnkey project in most cases, while outsourcing all end-user capex requirements as well as any ongoing maintenance, insurance and operational risk to ECI.
It is expected that the investment will result in approximately 20 new jobs.
“This is a fantastic opportunity for ECI to scale a third-generation business and to deploy significant amounts of capital in order to drive real energy savings and efficiencies for our clients,” said ECI Lighting’s managing director, Declan Hanratty.
“The positive environmental impact this investment will create is something which we can all be proud of.”
