Here's an interesting post on Facility Solution Group's web-site about the recent volatility in lamp prices due to to the shortage in rare-earth phosphors used in the manufacturing processes for many lamps.
Says FSG in the post, "Every major lamp manufacturer (GE, OSI, Philips, TCP, Maxlite, etc.) has announced scheduled price increases that will begin on July 5th and will likely continue at monthly intervals for the foreseeable future through 2012. The manufacturers have stated they will do all they can to manage and control the price increases by tying them only to the inflationary pressure associated with the rare earth elements.
The posting also includes links to letters from various lamp manufacturers on their price increases.
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Jim Lucy Blog
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Jim Lucy has been wandering through the electrical market for more than 30 years, most of the time as an editor for Electrical Wholesaling, Electrical Marketing newsletter and CEE News. During that time he and the editorial team for the publications have won numerous national awards for their coverage of the electrical business. He showed an early interest in electricity, when as a youth he had an idea for a hot dog cooker. Unfortunately, the first crude prototype malfunctioned and the arc nearly blew him out of his parents' basement. Before becoming an editor for Electrical Wholesaling magazine and Electrical Marketing, he earned a BA degree in journalism and a MA in communications from Glassboro State College, Glassboro, NJ., which is formerly best known as the site of the 1967 summit meeting between President Lyndon Johnson and Russian Premier Aleksei Nikolayevich Kosygin, and now best known as the New Jersey state college that changed its name in 1992 to Rowan University because of a generous $100 million donation by N.J. zillionaire industrialist Henry Rowan. Jim is a Brooklyn-born Jersey Guy happily transplanted in the fertile plains of Kansas for the past 20 years.