Jorge Jusdado

Offering LED lighting, IoT software, and other innovative solutions for various industries and sectors in Panama, Signify is committed to sustainability through innovation and R&D.

What is the Panamanian market characterized by?

In Panama, we have worked effectively with the utilities to reduce energy consumption nationwide, replacing most of the road lighting at the Corredor Norte and Corredor Sur with LED systems; and with ENA, installing solar lighting for their road network. Additionally, we have worked notably in architectural lighting to enhance the tourism sector. We have realized projects like the lighting of Panama Viejo and the third bridge over the Panama Canal. Apart from the tourist hook, the authorities can better monetize a historic site with events, weddings, or other corporate events. All is controlled by a downloadable app, and the city of Panama Viejo gets a new life because lighting can be modified to include, say, the national colors of the visitors. This also has had a significant impact on social media, which contributes to the overall promotion of our history. Public spaces are definitely one of our main strengths, but we are also increasing our capabilities in the indoor space. We illuminated most of the new Terminal 2 in Tocumen Airport with LED lighting; being a challenging project both from the technical side, with extreme high ceilings and strategically, as of its high importance for the country in terms of having a state-of-the-art airport. In the industrial arena, where the demand for energy reduction is also high, and in retail and hospitality, we can help customers to reduce the energy bill while improving the productivity of the employees, or the customers’ experience.

How is Signify bringing Panama closer to its sustainability goals?

Signify invests almost 5% of its revenues into R&D, and we are committed to innovate into more efficient products every year. We therefore bet a lot on sustainability, being a carbon neutral company since 2020. About 25% of our products are sold through the circular economy concept, recycling products into new ones. LED lighting combined with the lighting controls can help you to reduce between 70 and 80% of the energy bill of a current installation, and this impact is tremendous when you decide to change your conventional lighting to a digital lighting combined with lighting controls. Our focus now is on 3D-printed luminaires that we can manufacture with a printer using recycled materials like plastic from the sea, plastics from bags, bottles, CDs, or any other polymers that you can recycle. They have no screws, they weigh less, and we can produce them locally; by doing so, we also reduce dramatically the carbon footprint of shipping them from our printers in Latin America to Panama. We have other innovations like agricultural lighting for food growers, enabling better and more predictable vegetable yields. We also have lighting oriented to animal wellbeing. Finally, we also see notable interest in UV-C lighting that helps to disinfect the air of the buildings and the spaces where we are living or working. That kind of lighting helps purify the air every time the air flows next to the UV-C lighting making our environment healthier and a better place to live.

How can Interact be of help for different kind of companies?

Interact is the brand for our IoT software, with an interactive platform where you can control any kind of lighting asset you may have. You can control from your dashboard an industry, an office, a stadium, or a city. You will know the energy consumption of all your lighting and also get information about any potential failures, enabling you to be proactive or reactive. You have a dashboard where you can see, for example, the performance of your various retailers simultaneously, enabling you analyze patterns. These services are much in demand by large tenants that have or rent offices. And in industry, we are working with major corporations in Latam that are keen to monitor their various factories in the region from one single point of control.