LIGHTING THE WAY

Sustainable Business Magazine speaks with Saleem Khan, Director and Founder of Caribbean LED Solutions, about the incredible success his company has had. He explains how it not only leads the LED lighting solutions market in Trinidad & Tobago today, but created that market in the first place.

Caribbean LED Solutions was established in Trinidad & Tobago in 2011 by Saleem Khan. LED lighting was unusual and innovative in the country at the time, but the company had success with its first project at Alchemy Night Club in Port of Spain.

Founder and Director, Mr. Khan, describes this first project to Sustainable Business Magazine:

“It felt very playful at the time as we didn’t expect to become such a profound business. The nightclub’s staircase was painted black so it was very dark. We put in LED lighting and it worked fantastically. That success peaked our interest in LEDs as a lighting solution and we’ve been tinkering with them ever since.”

However, Caribbean LED Solutions was so ahead of the curve that it wasn’t entering a market space – it had to create one. Mr. Khan expands on the company’s early history:

“We got into LED solutions in 2013, at which point we were buying a selling them. However, we were doing that from the US because there was no Caribbean market at the time. Importing from the US led to some problems. People asked us why our lights were so expensive and, when they went bad, why couldn’t we repair them.

“That became frustrating so I opened an LED light up and realised that it was just an electrical circuit. There wasn’t any special gas or filaments inside them like in traditional fluorescent and incandescent bulbs. That blew my mind, but I knew I could make something of this. I had family living in Canada and, fortunately, some of them manufactured LEDs for the oil and gas industry. I learned some of the principles of manufacturing LEDs from them.

“At first we tried to bring their product line to Trinidad & Tobago but we were unable to get it into the oil and gas sector here because of the cost. Instead, eventually, we decided to take their manufacturing principles and set up our own assembly line here. I knew that way we weren’t dependent on external manufacturers to return faulty products or carry out services. We learned to do that ourselves. That’s how we got into the soft assembly of LED lighting solutions.”

This can-do attitude set the tone for Caribbean LED Solutions’ future.

Building A New Market

When Mr. Khan and his colleagues established Caribbean LED Solutions, there was no market space for LED lighting to speak of. That’s why the company found it so hard to find a foothold in the first place. Once it did, it faced further hurdles.

“We quickly realised that architects didn’t know how to translate the brightness of LEDs into their work or how to use them properly in room designs - they were too accustomed to traditional bulbs,” Mr. Khan says. “My solution was to learn design. We used computer software to try and figure out how to translate the brightness of LEDs into something that architects could understand and implement.”

However, that wasn’t the end of the issues, as Mr. Khan illustrates:

“We then started getting into the engineering and into the backend of how to utilise our lights because we had problems with installers. They simply didn’t know how to install LEDs. Back then they were challenging to install because not many people knew how to do it. They knew how to deal with high-voltage solutions but a lot of these were fixtures used low voltage. So that meant we ended up getting into installation as well.

“By the end, we were able to provide a top-to-bottom service where we custom designed, manufactured, installed and provided aftercare servicing for our LED lighting.”

As a result, Caribbean LED Solutions didn’t enter a fledgling market, it created one. And the company has remained at its forefront ever since.

Confidence In The Supply Chain

LED lighting is now almost ubiquitous in many parts of the world and Trinidad & Tobago is no exception. The market space is much more vibrant now than it was ten years ago and there are competitors to Caribbean LED Solutions’ offering. However, not all LEDs are made equal, and the company has used this to its advantage.

“The problem with LEDs today is planned obsolescence,” explains Mr. Khan. “An article published by the New Yorker in 2016 discussed how LED lights are supposed to be a green product but when you look at the full lifecycle of the products, that isn’t always true for newer products.

“There are LED lights out there that are ten years old and still working perfectly, but newer products will last just two or three years before they die. Sure, you may get carbon savings during those few years, but then it comes time to dispose of them. LED lights aren’t made of glass and metals that can be returned to the earth: they’re plastic and aluminum and other non-biodegradable materials.

“Since we can’t recycle the products, we should be able to repair or repurpose them. However, newer LEDs don’t allow this either because they’re made from cheap materials. We used to donate old LEDs given to us - whether they were ours or not - to Habitat for Humanity, who could use them in homes. We had to stop that though because planned obsolescence meant we started getting too many, and their quality was very poor. We weren’t able to service them, repair them, before donating them.”

Caribbean LED Solutions’ answer to this is simple: use better quality materials and better quality manufacturing.

“A lot of our raw materials come from China, as with many other manufacturers around the world,” explains Mr. Khan. “This is mostly to do with Trinidad & Tobago being an island nation. We simply don’t have the natural resources needed to produce

LED lighting. We’re limited. We need to import nearly everything. Our trick, though, is to ensure we get compliance certification from our suppliers throughout the chain. All of them must comply with the CE and RoHS standards.

“Beyond that, we also acquire material spec sheets to verify and validate the quality of all our raw materials. We don’t want to buy diluted aluminium that’s fairly common in China, for example, because that would diminish the quality of our end products. We have to get this certificate from our suppliers signed off to make sure the materials that they are using and guaranteeing are up to our standards. A lot of contracts have given us high-grade aluminium, stuff that will stand the test of time, which means that if they need to change or repair components, the lighting solutions will still work.

“Our compliance certification also means we can offer our clients long-term warranties on our products. Our circuit boards come with a five-year guarantee, for example. Our quality checks on materials mean we want our products to last at least ten years if not more. We want them to stand the test of time. There’s no incentive to take this path in Trinidad & Tobago - there are no tax breaks or green initiatives that reward our decision to do this. We’re doing it of our own accord. We want to make LEDs a truly green and sustainable lighting solution.”

Sustainability And Serviceability

Having been a key player in building Trinidad’s market for LED lighting, Mr; Khan explains that Caribbean LED Solutions is now returning to its roots and focusing on the longevity of its products:

“In 2023, we finally reached that part of the market space where we could shed all the other hats we were wearing to ensure the product is integrated correctly. That meant we could focus on educating architects and installers on how to use our products currently. The USP of our fixtures is that we build them not just to last, but to have high serviceability. That means where the aluminium profiles or the plastic pieces would normally go to landfill or get recycled, we actually keep those parts as long as possible. On our lights, we can change the circuit board or the external transformer without replacing the whole product.

“There are of course some limitations in terms of the national electric code in each country. For example, in the US, our American suppliers weren’t able to send us back all their broken fixtures. I could have repaired them but it would have breached certain standards they have with their governing body. As far as possible though our drive is to keep serviceable stuff out of the landfills. Every part of our manufacturing is serialised so that if anything goes wrong, we can send a replacement part if it is external, or if it’s internal then we get a registered person who knows how to do it to safely do that retrofit for you.”

Beautifying Space

With a proven record of success behind it, Caribbean LED Solutions’ plan for the future is to continue pushing the boundaries of the market space that it helped create.

“Our future plan is convincing more people of LEDs, lobbying for better support for sustainable lighting solutions, and educating the market on good lighting design,” Mr. Khan explains. “One of the most overlooked aspects of sustainability as it relates to lighting is the importance of light to wellbeing. And that’s one of the services we’re going to start putting more effort into.

“It’s becoming more important to people that they don’t want to be in a sterile space when they’re working, shopping or trying to enjoy themselves. They want to feel motivated to go out, especially after Covid. If we want to get people back out into the public space and have healthier engagements, we need to create more beautiful spaces for them.

“In Trinidad & Tobago, everything is a little more sterile right now. So our work now is to add a whole other layer of beauty to spaces and motivate people to come back out.” c