LED light firm feels it's been shunned by city

A top executive of Canadian based company Pristine LED claims the firm has been shut out to date from doing business with the city after opening in Windsor with much fanfare less than a year ago and hopes of providing up to 300 jobs.

Meetings were held with a pair of city managers, but after three sessions with promising talks to provide LED lighting to the city, the company has not heard back or had phone calls returned over the last six months, said the company's Bruce Melmer.

Instead, Chinese company BYD has convinced Enwin Utilities to allow pilot tests of 30 LED street lights in Windsor. They are located on Jefferson Boulevard and Sunset Avenue.

A company executive said Wednesday BYD wanted to test how its LED street lights hold up through winter in a northern climate as they are primarily in use in California.

He also said the green firm is close to a decision whether to build an electric bus manufacturing plant in Windsor that could create up to 500 jobs.

Given early indications Pristine was in line to see its products used by the city, Melmer is crying foul. But city officials are saying he shouldn't read anything into it.

Pristine manufactures high efficiency LED lighting for the commercial, industrial and residential markets. The firm vows the LED technology it uses offers 75 per cent less electricity than other lighting products, while producing a more natural light.

"What we do is high-end technology and brought it to market," Melmer said. "We were wooed to come here by the development commission. We picked up the phone and were telling (the city) we are the new LED company in town and hoped they would do business with us.

"They never bought any product and the door was shut on us."

Last April Pristine opened a 22,300-square-foot head office and manufacturing facility at 3215 Jefferson Blvd.

The company has so far been able to get by on smaller jobs such as county arenas, an ambulance building, a Tim Hortons and Boston Pizza locales, but Melmer remains disappointed no business is being done with the city.

"They will not answer the phone or return our messages," he said.

Pristine to date only has about 25 employees on staff.

Meanwhile, city officials said the city has no looming lighting retrofit work - and when it does become available, Pristine is free to participate in the RFP or tender process.

The city retrofitted lighting at several of its facilities such as arenas, community centres and libraries within the last couple of years, but has little scheduled in the budget for 2012, said John Miceli, manager of facilities for the City of Windsor.

"We are just winding up some of those retrofits and in the verification stage on energy consumption," he said. "To just complete that measure and jump into another interest as to lighting may not be in the best interests of taxpayers.

"They shouldn't feel shunned," he said. "We have not yet gone through (their) technology."