Osram and Continental sign joint venture contract

he technology companies Osram and Continental have successfully concluded their negotiations on the Osram Continental GmbH joint venture. The joint venture, in which each of the partners has a 50 percent stake, aims to combine Continental’s and Osram’s respective expertise in lighting, light control and electronics and is scheduled to start in the second half of 2018, once all the necessary merger control approvals have been granted. CEO Dirk Linzmeier comes from Osram and CFO Harald Renner from Continental.

“Digitalization is creating new potential applications in automotive lighting and, in turn, tremendous opportunities that we want to leverage with Continental. By joining forces, we will be in an even better position to drive forward innovations by working closely with the automotive industry to integrate lighting, sensor technology and electronics seamlessly in a single application. This will allow us to advance new intelligent light functions such as the combination of lighting and sensor technology in a module or light-based communication between the driver, other road users and the vehicle’s surroundings,” explained Hans-Joachim Schwabe, CEO of Osram’s Specialty Lighting division.

“We want to actively drive forward technological change in the lighting market within the automotive industry and develop even more innovative and intelligent lighting solutions. The joint venture will help us to establish the conditions for this since it combines our expertise in software and electronics with Osram’s automotive lighting expertise. As such, we will be able to offer our customers an unrivaled portfolio in the lighting market,” said Andreas Wolf, head of Continental’s Body & Security business unit.

The joint venture will be based within the region of Munich, but will operate globally to ensure rapid development cycles with customers in their local areas. The product portfolio will feature semiconductor-based lighting modules such as LED modules for front and rear headlights, laser modules and light control units.

Picture: Hans-Joachim Schwabe, CEO of the Speciality Lighting Business Unit at OSRAM Licht AG (left), and Andreas Wolf, Head of the Body & Security Business Unit at Continental AG (right).