Tridonic, a global technology leader in lighting, welcomed customers and industry professionals to The Country Club Johannesburg in Woodmead on 12 February for the second edition of its annual customer event. Building on the success of last year's inaugural gathering in Cape Town, the event provided a platform for the company to outline its evolving market approach and showcase the innovations shaping its future direction.
Setting the scene
Charles Tewitz, managing director of Tridonic South Africa, opened proceedings with a welcome address that set the tone for the afternoon. Tewitz discussed Tridonic's established market presence and its ongoing transformation from a pure component supplier to an integrated systems and services provider. He emphasised that this journey could only succeed with the support of the company's key customers, a theme that resonated throughout the event.
Innovation at the core
Philipp Heindl, vice president of Business Development at Tridonic's headquarters in Austria, delivered the keynote presentation, giving attendees a broad overview of the company's innovation pipeline. Heindl cited Tridonic's patent productivity as evidence of its commitment to R&D, noting that the company holds nearly 1.5 patents per employee and ranked second in Austria for newly registered patents last year.
He introduced Tridonic's Building Asset 360 market approach, which positions lighting as a building asset that provides data on its health and performance. It is focused on retrofit applications and built around three pillars of asset management, net-zero carbon, and people and well-being.
"We want to make sure that lighting is seen as an asset in a building, and that asset managers, real estate companies, and facility managers understand what lighting can add to the value of their building," said Heindl.
Heindl went on to outline a number of key innovations in the pipeline. These include the Lifetime Indicator – an AI-driven feature that monitors the remaining useful life of LED drivers to enable predictive maintenance; Tridonic’s focus on solar lighting; a growing family of DC-input drivers; and the joint market penetration in partnership with Schneider Electric for microgrid applications.
On the controls side, Tridonic is expanding its wireless portfolio with new mesh integrations that bridge indoor and outdoor installations in a single system. Investment also continues in the company's lighting management platforms for projects ranging from single boardrooms to large-scale hospital and university installations.
Technology in action
Leroy Baird, leading national sales manager at Tridonic South Africa, followed with a showcase of local projects delivered using Tridonic lighting controls, demonstrating the company's growing systems and services capability in the South African market.
Attendees then moved into a solutions deep dive led by Henk Rotman of Tridonic, who provided a live, hands-on demonstration of the Lifetime Indicator and other technologies presented during the keynote.
The event closed with time for networking, giving customers the opportunity to connect with Tridonic's team and explore how the company's evolving portfolio can support their projects going forward.
