Acquisition of Hyperion boosts presence of Midstream Lighting in horticulture

The U.K.’s Midstream Lighting has bolstered its horticultural lighting offerings, acquiring Britain’s Hyperion Grow Lights for an undisclosed amount. The move marks the second change of hands for Hyperion in the last three years.

Privately held Midstream is combining Hyperion’s latest luminaires with its existing horticultural line — including The Flare — and will sell them under the “Hyperion by Midstream Lighting” banner, a Midstream spokesperson told LEDs Magazine. The company completed the acquisition in September and announced it last week.

Hyperion, which spun out of Plymouth, England–based Plessey Semiconductors in December 2019, has now folded as a company. It had most recently been based in Cardiff, Wales, according to U.K. business registry Companies House.

Jonathan Barton, who was Hyperion’s managing director and before that ran the horticultural group at Plessey, joins as Midstream’s head of horticulture, reporting to the London-based company’s co-founder and commercial director Yuli Grig, the spokesperson said.

Barton’s appointment should provide an extra push for Midstream in horticulture. Unlike the £20 million company’s other divisions — maritime, aviation, military, and sport — horticulture has been without an individual as the dedicated head. Grig had been sharing those duties along with Midstream operations director and fellow co-founder Alexander Krupkin, according to the spokesperson.

Midstream is taking on Hyperion’s new Hyperion Pro and Hyperion Pro Max luminaires, which last month replaced earlier products in the Hyperion range. Midstream refers to the Pro and Max models collectively as the Hyperion Pro Series and helped design them.

Hyperion had installed previous models in, among other places, the Pawel Karpinski lettuce farm in Zuromin, Poland. That grower has now expanded with the installation of Pro models.

While Midstream did not reveal the purchase price, it confirmed that it acquired all of Hyperion shares from previous owners. It did not spell out who those owners were.

When Hyperion split from Plessey, London-based technology investment firm Endeavour Ventures bought in. And according to Companies House, owners have also included Barton and former head agronomist Maarten Klein, who left the company a year ago.

Hyperion had worked over the years with Plessey for engineering and with the former Osram — now part of ams Osram — for LED sources. The extent to which those two companies are still involved is not clear. Midstream has its own research, development, and design operations in Milan, Italy, headed by technical director Paolo Corno, who is also a co-founder.

Midstream rates the 600W Hyperion Pro at a photosynthetic photon flux (PPF) of up to 2100 umol/s with an efficacy of up to 3.5 μmol/J at full power. It rates the 1200W Hyperion Pro Max at a PPF of up to 4300 umol/s, also with an efficacy of 3.5 μmol/J at full power.

Now, with its fortified operations, Midstream will face a conundrum that the horticultural lighting industry in general is wrestling with. While LED lighting augurs significant savings in energy bills, some growers cannot afford the upfront capital expenditure because of the current prohibitive costs of energy and other budgetary constraints, as both Signify and ams Osram have noted.

MARK HALPER is a contributing editor for LEDs Magazine, and an energy, technology, and business journalist ([email protected]).

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