The website does not appear to be working properly, because under the "Business as usual" title in the main banner at the top, there appears to be a portion of text missing. This is what I can read:



I suppose the whole thing of Philips WRTL could be a stop-gap solution. I don't know how others read it, but the way they talk about "embedded", "Philips Outdoor Lighting portfolio" and "richer product portfolio", it seems like Indal products may appear on the proper Philips website soon, rebranded as Philips products, rather than being sold separately. As for WRTL in the UK, I am not sure a big company like Philips will keep what is largely a distributor for foreign made products open.

The full text is:



With a link


below that.

Hopefully the WRTL site won't get the Philips treatment!

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I just thought I would bump an old thread back to life for the purpose of discussion.

The Philips acquisition of Indal would not be the first that the company has made. For many years in France there was the Mazda brand. This got taken over by Philips, and for a while Philips appeared to sell lanterns in France under this brand name. There were some authentic Mazda products mixed in with renamed Philips products, plus there was the curious Mazda Modula which was a Philips TrafficVision with a more curved body. After a while the products unique to the Mazda brand name disappeared, with Mazda only selling rebadged Philips products, and then the Mazda name was dropped. There was also the AEG brand. The integration of AEG was more rapid. AEG designs were retained at first, but following redesign and updating of a couple of models most AEG designs were then phased out.

Will a similar thing happen with Indal? Perhaps Philips will retain and update the most popular Indal designs and dispense of the rest. Perhaps the appearance of Indal products on the Philips website offers a clue as to what will be retained and what will be discontinued.

Philips need to do something, they had too many products prior to the merge. Despite the Arc competing with their flagship product (Iridium),  I very much doubt their customers will allow them to kill off the Arc especially in the short to medium term given its popularity and unlike (most) Iridiums, it has an ally canopy for recycling.

I also think that the Luma (and probably the Stela) will stay. Philips haven’t had any luck with their own LED lanterns – Speedstar for instance. And despite the Residium being very similar to the Libra, the more modern and ally canopied rival has cleaned up.

However, the Dutch enthusiasts have seen a Libra with the Philips Fortimo LED system – which again seems daft and wasted effort since there was already a LED version of the Luma - well available at least in the Netherlands.

I agree, for Philips to kill off the Arc would be to shoot themselves in the foot. The Arc is a very popular lantern, not as popular as the Iridium, but there is a considerable quantity of them in Europe, in the UK, Ireland and Netherlands in particular.

It was once Industria's flagship lantern, although it got overtaken by the Luma. Whilst it has a better build quality and is more recyclable than the Iridium, I don't think Philips will take this into account. I could be wrong, but my instinct says that one day Philips will discontinue the Indal Arc and turn around to customers and say "Look, have an Iridium2". One thing I think is guaranteed is that Philips are not going to develop the Arc as a product.

Are you aware Steve that Indal have a RETROLED product that can be fitted into existing WRTL lanterns such as the Libra and Arc?  I do hope you are wrong about the Arc, it is a nicer looking lantern than the bulbous looking Philips Iridium (which incidentally DOES NOT have an LED retrofit option at present).