Following its complete renovation and reopening in November 2023, TPi was invited to Pécs, Hungary for a complete tour of Harman Professional’s dedicated Martin Professional space to get an insight into the freshly streamlined operation along with hearing how the company looks to reach its goal of carbon neutrality by 2040.
TPi was greeted by Martin Professional Senior Manager, András Dobre; Product Manager, Henrik Kristensen as well as EMEA Sales Director, Ben Payne, at the gates of the Pécs factory. The facility is situated over 100 miles from the Hungarian capital and has been the regional home for Martin Professional for several years. The factory’s facelift took eight months to finish and the facility now offers a streamlined operation, with the factory in full production during the visit. It’s also the only factory in the HARMAN Professional collective that focusses entirely on Martin Professional products and development.
BECOMING INCREASINGLY ENVIRONMENTALLY CONCIOUS
For the new factory, HARMAN modernised the more than 107,000 sq ft manufacturing facility to enable the lighting brand to heat and cool the facility with geothermal energy using a water-to-water heat pump. Electricity for the whole facility will now be sourced via onsite solar PV panels, introduced in 2024, with the company anticipating a reduced electricity consumption of up to 15%, aiming to reach 100% renewable energy in all HARMAN factories by 2025.
“Over the past six years, the Martin brand put into production more than 20 major LED lighting product SKUs with more new products being announced soon. It’s imperative that we not only create more space to meet demand but do so responsibly and in line with our corporate goals,” said Brian Divine, President, HARMAN Professional Solutions. “The completion of this project is proof to our customers that we produce reliable products in technologically advanced facilities while doing so with reduced impact to our environment.”
Touring the factory, TPi discovered that 99% of the waste that the factory creates is used and recycled in the compression area with clear signposted bins for the 300 staff employed in the factory. Sustainability is not a new topic for Martin Professional, with the company bringing in a third-party company to do a life cycle assessment of the MAC Aura XIP, which was released in 2022. This dedication to bettering its practices was to ensure the company had access to more metrics surrounding sustainability, meaning that the data provided could then be used against all future products under the Martin Professional name.
Consistently striving to better its sustainability practices, HARMAN Professional has signed the climate pledge to meet the Paris Agreement 10 years earlier than outlined. The company is working toward shorter-term, measurable targets that aim to reduce its carbon footprint while being able to track the improvement due to small and often initiatives.
Operating under the HARMAN Professional umbrella, Martin Professional is contributing to its wider sustainability efforts and goals, especially within its new site in Pécs but as a whole with operational emissions decreased by 13% from 2019 to 2022, to which HARMAN commented: “Members of our manufacturing teams in our factories globally have been instrumental in reducing our impact.”
FURTHER PRODUCT INNOVATION
Significant effort has also been put into the hiring process for the Pécs factory, with recruits going through intensive training exercises that can take from six months to a year to ensure the standards that Martin Professional sets for its fixtures are met. Dobre emphasised the importance of the conscientious training process: “We have to focus on the people to get the best performance – out of both the staff and the products,” he said.
The brand’s factory produces 5,500 products a month including its new MAC Viper XIP, which takes six-and-a-half hours to build. For each fixture that is created in the factory, 75 different compliance, reliability and performance verification tests are undertaken to ensure the longevity, safety and sustainability of the products manufactured; tests include extreme heat and cold climate tests to be able to battle with outdoor performances, EMC Emission compliance tests, electrical evaluation and field tests among many others.
With the new plant seeing a 40% increase in capacity from its previous site, it can hold 3,800 pallets of parts for its moving heads with ease, the entire refurbishment was finalised without any business interruption.
Focussing on the lifespan of its products, Martin Professional has made a significant effort in developing product features with the MAC Viper XIP, being its most feature-rich fixture yet. The XIP technology makes this feature 1.5kg lighter than its predecessors and offers a reduced consumption of energy as well as fewer materials and resources.
Crucial to its development and dedication to less waste is the rigorous testing stages of the fixtures. Featuring three main test phases; burn-in, which sees each product feature be tested for 3.5 hours to check every mechanical function, and colour calibration, for uniformity between products and visual inspections where it is checked for a final time.
Finalising its process in the Pécs factory, the fixtures move to the shipment line where the products are shipped directly to customers and distributors worldwide in cardboard packaging that includes a SIP insert that can fit directly into a flight case, resulting in no waste and directly recyclable packaging.
With ambitious proactive sustainable missions, certainly Martin Professional is not slowing down its development when it comes to innovation with the Pécs facility being a clear example of this. With a busy of summer of festivals a stadium shows, TPi is sure it will come across the Martin Professional brand on many a lighting plot in the coming months.
Words: Alicia Pollitt
