MHT Lighting Meets 'Buy American' Requirements of the ARRA as Department of Energy (DOE) Audits Lighting Companies

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y., Aug. 4 /PRNewswire/ -- The DOE investigated several lighting companies for a congressional committee as to whether certain firms violated the Buy American provision of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.  MHT Lighting, of Staten Island, NY was one of several companies selected for the investigation. All documentation from MHT was submitted and based on the information supplied, there has been no further action required.  MHT Lighting meets and exceeds "Buy American" requirements for the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) for purposes of bidding and supplying energy efficient Induction Lighting products on public works contracts with municipalities in the United States. 

In the past several months, there has been a lot of scrutiny regarding energy efficient Induction Lighting companies stating they meet "Buy American" requirement under the ARRA.  Many of these companies are bidding and sometimes accepting municipality projects that use ARRA stimulus money.

"This is fraudulent and creates unfair competition for the very few companies that have invested a large amount of time and capital in a manufacturing facility," –says Mark Shotton, VP of MHT Lighting.  MHT encourages the DOE investigations and feel they will put more companies on an even playing field regarding price.  "We have lost jobs to these companies and even had a California based company call and ask us to manufacturer their product the same day they bid on a project against MHT –that's ridiculous!" says Shotton.  

Many companies are importing only two or three components and assembling them, which takes very little time, capital investment and employees or they simply add a label to the imported product.  The DOE  has a team of engineers and auditors that perform an in-depth investigation of many companies that are receiving stimulus money for municipality projects.  Companies that are found to be fraudulent or misleading can receive very large fines;  a freeze on operations or are subject to imprisonment. Up until recently, "Buy American" requirements have been a self-regulating process with many companies taking advantage of the lack of detail and enforcement.

MHT has spent thousands of dollars on independent consulting firms and attorneys to help document their NAFTA and "Buy American" status.  

"We intend on closely following our competition  to make sure they are following the DOE's requirements,"–says Tom Spinelli, CEO of MHT Lighting.  

With $47 billion allocated for infrastructure, including public building, transportation, and repair, and $40 billion for energy efficiency and renewable energy, the government has caught a lot of heat about enforcing such regulations.

Studies have shown that Induction Lighting provides the fastest recovery of investment with a payback in as few as 2 years compared to 8-12 years or more with other energy efficient technologies such as Light Emitting Diode ("LED").

MHT's Induction lights also has double the useable life of LED, which helps bring maintenance and replacement costs down for municipalities and save lot of money for the cities.  

Induction lighting can save approximately 40-70% in energy savings over existing lighting products. Lighting accounts for up to half of any municipalities' energy usage, thus nearly every City, County and State Department of Transportation is aggressively looking to replace their streetlights and other outdoor lighting under this program. The ARRA program also stipulates that products bought with the stimulus funds must meet "Buy American" requirements.

Induction lighting is an electrode-less fluorescent lamp that is powered by a very efficient electronic ballast.  The electrode-less nature of the induction lamp gives it some unique characteristics, such as a very long lifespan (100,000 hours & 5-10 times traditional lighting) and produces a very high quality "white light" which can replace existing commercial High Intensity Discharge ("HID") sources such as Metal Halide and High/Low Pressure Sodium with a solution that uses 40% to 85% less energy.

"MHT is constantly looking at innovations  to improve our induction lighting and advancements in other lighting technologies. Our business model is to continue to grow as the leader of energy efficient lighting technology, while manufacturing and maintaining a high quality product and top customer service," –says Shotton.

MHT has invested several million dollars in their 55,000 square foot state-of-the-art manufacturing facility located in Staten Island, NY. and a second location in San Diego, CA. for distribution and sales.  "Our assembly lines are currently capable of manufacturing 16,000- 40,000 products per month and we employ 16 American workers per line," –says Spinelli. 

Currently, MHT's facility is devoted to manufacturing, engineering, testing, inspection,  distribution, innovations and general business operations. "We are currently the only induction lighting company in the USA to be ISO 9000/01 certified for manufacturing and quality procedures.  Every product has detailed step-by-step manufacturing, assembling and testing procedures to ensure quality and long life," –Tom Spinelli.  

For further information or inquiries, please contact MHT Lighting.

SOURCE MHT Lighting