South Korea’s small- and medium-sized companies have teamed up to help cut the cost of hosting the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics in the country by installing light-emitting diode (LED) lightings at Olympics venues.

A consortium formed by Korea’s BlueKite, KMW Inc. and Chunil Engineering has won a 16.3 billion won ($14 million) contract to install LED lightings at a stadium for 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, BlueKite said.

BlueKite CEO Chang Heung-soon claimed that it would be the world’s first case to light up on Olympic venues. The LED lights will brighten an outdoor stadium that will host ski jump, biathlon and cross country games, according to the company. KMW will be responsible for supplying lightings, Chunil for installment and BlueKite for light controlling software.

BlueKite that has already successfully supplied and installed the same LED lamps in baseball stadiums in the United States for the Major League Baseball team Seattle Mariners and New York Yankees with KMW is confident that the use of LEDs for Pyeongchang Olympics venues would significantly cut the cost of hosting the international event.

Most sports stadiums are lit with energy-guzzling metal halide lamps that require at least 30 minutes to warm up and generate high heats. They also use toxic substances such as lead and mercury while manufacturing.

The BlueKite’s LED lights, on the other hand, do not require a warm-up time and consume 70 percent less energy than the metal halide lights. Remote controlling is also possible via BlueKite’s software.

The company has been able to develop LED lamps that meet the standards required to host Olympic Games by conducting research on them last year. It commissioned LG Innotek to develop LED chips to fit the lightings.

“I feel pride not only for providing domestically made lights to Pyeongchang Olympics but also for contributing to cost reduction,” said Chang.

The lightings have already done pre-test. Gangwondo Development Corp. made the ski jump arena a temporary soccer field last month to improve utilization. Two Korean-league soccer games have been successfully held so far.

BlueKite, founded in April 2014 through collaboration of an industry, university and research institute has seen its sales surge from 3.8 billion won in 2014 to 12.1 billion won last year, and CEO Chang estimated sales for this year would exceed 200 billion won.

In cooperation with its largest shareholder Sogang University, the Korean light solutions company also aims to develop car accident prevention solutions by using its LED street lights that would be used to collect traffic information.

By Chung Soon-woo

[ⓒ Pulse by Maeil Business News Korea & mk.co.kr, All rights reserved]