Georgia does not have its own lighting column standard, and it does not need one. Under the Product Safety and Free Movement Code of Georgia, mandatory state safety requirements apply only within a regulated field; outside it, a business may choose which safety requirements to meet. In practice an importer may comply either with Georgian standards or with the standards of EU and OECD member countries, and foreign standards are registered with the national agency rather than replaced. The government accepts standards from 37 EU and OECD countries. So an EN 40 pole is acceptable in Georgia because European standards are accepted there, not because Georgia has published its own version of EN 40.

Artay Lighting has cast aluminium in its own die-cast foundry in Istanbul since 1999 and exports to more than 33 countries. Georgia is one of the closest of them, and one of the few where a Turkish manufacturer ships industrial goods at zero duty. This page sets out what applies, what the Batumi climate does to a pole, and how tenders are published.

Which standards apply to a lighting pole in Georgia?

The framework law is the Product Safety and Free Movement Code of Georgia, No. 6157-IS of 2012. Article 2(1)(a) states that mandatory safety requirements established by the state apply only to a regulated field, and that in other fields an entrepreneur may voluntarily choose which safety requirements to meet. Article 3(1) then provides that a product within a regulated area, manufactured in a country with appropriate product safety standards and advanced quality infrastructure and in compliance with that country’s legislation, is placed on the market without restriction, with the list of countries defined by the Government.

The standards body is the Georgian National Agency for Standards and Metrology, GEOSTM, which has been a CEN-CENELEC Affiliate since 1 January 2023 – a status described as an intermediary step towards full membership, aimed at high alignment with European standards. A Technical Regulation on Construction Products came into force on 15 January 2019, reported to have been drafted in line with EU Regulation 305/2011.

What we could not establish is whether GEOSTM has adopted the EN 40 series under a Georgian designation; we could not find EN 40 in its catalogue, and we are not going to invent a designation. If a tender asks for a Georgian standard number for lighting columns, ask the contracting authority to name it rather than assuming one exists.

What does the free trade agreement actually give you?

The Türkiye-Georgia Free Trade Agreement was signed in Tbilisi on 21 November 2007 and entered into force on 1 November 2008. Article 4 abolished all customs duties on imports, and charges having equivalent effect, on products originating in either party from the date the agreement entered into force. For industrial goods that means zero duty, evidenced by a EUR.1 movement certificate. There is no phase-in left to wait for; it has been in force for eighteen years.

The part most exporters miss is Decision No 1/2016, which enables diagonal cumulation between Türkiye, Georgia and the European Union. Diagonal cumulation means materials originating in one of those parties can count as originating when incorporated in another – so a pole assembled in Türkiye from qualifying EU material can still hold origin for Georgia, and a Georgian project sourcing from Türkiye does not lose preferential treatment because a component came from the EU. On a bill of materials that mixes Turkish casting with European electrical components, that is the difference between a duty-free entry and a full-rate one.

Why does Batumi change the specification when Tbilisi does not?

Because the Georgian Black Sea coast is one of the wettest places a lighting pole gets installed in this region. Batumi receives 2,435 mm of precipitation a year. Monthly rainfall exceeds 150 mm from July through to March, and November alone averages 312 mm. Monthly mean temperatures run from 4.4 °C in February to 27.5 °C in August, with an annual mean of 15.45 °C on 1991-2020 data – a humid subtropical climate with mild winters, warm summers and very abundant rainfall.

That combination does something specific to a pole. On a Mediterranean or Gulf coast, salt is deposited and the surface then dries; corrosion runs in cycles. On the Georgian coast the surface is wet for most of the year and effectively never completes a drying cycle, so any water that gets inside a shaft stays there. The chloride load, meanwhile, is lower than a specifier used to the Mediterranean would expect: the Black Sea’s surface salinity averages 17 to 18 parts per thousand, roughly half that of ocean water. Less chloride, far more water. It is a different problem, not a milder one.

Inland is a different specification again. Tbilisi is not a coastal environment, and writing a coastal coating system for the whole country is how a project pays for protection it does not need in one place and still gets it wrong in another. As always, no standard assigns a corrosivity category to a named city – the specification writer names the category and the coating system follows from it. The mechanism is set out in the coastal lighting poles guide.

Which part of a pole fails first in a wet climate?

The inside. A lighting column is a closed tube with two deliberate openings – the cable entry and the access door – and both of them let in more water than anyone expects, partly as rain driven horizontally and partly as condensation when a warm humid day is followed by a cold night. In a dry climate that water evaporates. At 2,435 mm a year and high humidity it does not.

Three details decide whether that matters. A drain at the base, so standing water inside the shaft has somewhere to go rather than sitting against the weld and the base plate. A door that sheds water rather than collecting it, with its frame detailed so rain running down the shaft is directed around the aperture instead of into it. And the earthing point, which lives inside the door and is the first thing to corrode once the inside of a pole stays damp. None of these three costs anything at the drawing stage and all three are expensive at year six.

How are Georgian lighting tenders published?

Through the State Procurement Agency, on the Unified Electronic System of State Procurement at tenders.procurement.gov.ge. The agency’s own site is available in Georgian and English. Thresholds run roughly as follows: a simplified electronic tender covers procurements from about GEL 5,000 to GEL 200,000, a regular electronic tender applies above that, and an international announcement is used above roughly GEL 2 million.

Tender documentation is in Georgian, and the translation requirement is the practical obstacle for a supplier without a local presence rather than anything technical. Georgia has also adopted a new public procurement law aligning with EU rules; we could not confirm its entry-into-force date from an official source, so check the current procedure rather than relying on a description written before it.

What can Artay supply for a Georgian project?

Cast aluminium poles, bollards and luminaire housings from our own foundry in Başakşehir, Istanbul, in EN AC-46000 (AlSi9Cu3) alloy with chromate pre-treatment before electrostatic powder coating; and hot-dip galvanized steel poles to EN ISO 1461, up to 12 m, fabricated to the EN 40 series. Luminaires are CE marked, and manufacturing is certified to TSE under TS EN 40 for lighting columns and to ISO 9001 for quality management. Ask for the certificate together with its scope – a certificate covering luminaires does not cover columns.

We do not make high-mast poles, and we buy in extruded aluminium profile rather than extruding it ourselves, as most of this market does. What we do make from nothing is a form: because the aluminium is cast rather than fabricated, a promenade in Batumi or a square in Kutaisi can have a pole of its own. A new die is cut in our own tool shop in four to six weeks and a first delivery follows seven to nine weeks after drawing approval; repeat orders on that die ship in three weeks. Changing only height, diameter, wall thickness, arm length or RAL colour needs no die at all and carries no minimum order.

Istanbul to Tbilisi is a road shipment, which for a repeat order on an existing die means a delivered pole in weeks rather than months. Send a drawing, a tender specification or a written requirement to info@artaylighting.com and we will return a technical drawing, a wind-load calculation and a delivery date.

Related guides

• Coastal lighting poles – chloride, corrosivity categories, fixings and cable entry.
• Street lighting pole types – the four families, and how a galvanized steel pole is made.
• Lighting pole materials – galvanized steel, cast aluminium and extruded profile compared.
• Street lighting poles for Iraq – a specification built on entirely different standards.
• What drives the cost of a lighting pole – where the money goes, and why unit prices are not published.
• Lighting poles for Greece – the ELOT technical specification a tender actually cites, CE marking and the A.TR certificate.
• Lighting poles for Moldova – the EN 40 series named by the energy regulator, and a 64-degree annual range.
• Lighting pole standards by country — the eight export markets side by side: what each tender cites, where it is published and what crosses the border.

Kuwait’s own electrical specification does not cover street lighting poles – it says so explicitly. The Ministry of Electricity and Water’s General Specification for Electrical Installation, MEW/S-1, fourth edition 2014, states in clause A.1.2 that “this specification does not cover street and external lighting on lighting columns.” Clause A.1.3 does cover car park lighting, decorative lighting, bollard lighting, boundary-wall and facade lighting. So a bollard is inside the specification and a street lighting column is outside it, and a supplier who quotes MEW/S-1 for a column has quoted the wrong document.

Artay Lighting has cast aluminium in its own die-cast foundry in Istanbul since 1999 and exports to more than 33 countries. This page sets out which standards actually apply in Kuwait, what 50-degree summers and 300 haze days a year do to a pole, and what has to happen before a container clears customs.

Which standards actually apply to a lighting column in Kuwait?

With MEW/S-1 excluding columns, the operative rule is the general materials clause. MEW/S-1 clause A.7.1 requires that materials “shall comply as a minimum with the latest relevant recommendations of the International Electro-Technical Commission (I.E.C.) and if this is not available to the latest relevant British Standard Specifications (B.S.S).” That is the hierarchy a Kuwaiti tender falls back on: IEC first, British Standards second.

On the Gulf standards side, the picture is thinner than most suppliers imply. We could confirm exactly one part of the EN 40 series adopted as a Gulf Standard: GSO EN 40-7:2023, “Lighting columns – Part 7: Requirements for fibre reinforced polymer composite lighting columns”, approved 3 May 2023 and based on EN 40-7:2002. We could not confirm that GSO has adopted EN 40-2, 40-3-1, 40-3-3, 40-5 or 40-6. Anyone claiming a full GSO EN 40 series should be asked to produce the standard numbers.

Kuwait’s national standards body is the Public Authority for Industry, whose Industrial Standards and Services Sector sets and issues standard specifications for national and imported products, and hosts Kuwait’s WTO technical-barriers enquiry point. Under the Kuwait Conformity Assurance Scheme the applied standards are described as Kuwaiti standards, GSO standards and IEC.

How hot does it actually get, and how much dust is there?

These are the published figures, and they are worth quoting exactly rather than describing.

Over the decade to 2023, dust storms at Kuwait International Airport ranged from 1 to 18 a year and haze days from 236 to 317. In other words, airborne dust is not an event in Kuwait; it is the normal state of the air for most of the year, and a pole specification that treats it as an exception is written for somewhere else.

Why does the surface temperature matter more than the air temperature?

Because nothing on a pole is at air temperature. A project electrical specification for a school in Jaber Al-Ahmad City states the design conditions plainly: maximum ambient temperature in summer 52 °C, maximum sun radiation temperature in summer 84 °C, humidity up to 100% at 30 °C, and “violent sand and dust storms occur”. That is a project document rather than a national standard, but the 84 °C figure is the one that decides component selection.

At 84 °C a powder coating is well inside its service range and a door gasket may not be. Cable insulation is derated. A luminaire driver mounted inside a pole head sits in air that has been heated by the steel around it, not by the sky. And the daily swing between an 84 °C surface at noon and a cool night works every joint and seal on the pole several thousand times a year, which is what eventually opens a cable entry that was watertight on the day of installation.

The practical consequence for a specification is to state the surface design temperature, not only the ambient one, and to ask the supplier which figure their gasket and sealing materials are rated to.

What about corrosion on the Gulf coast?

ISO 12944-2 classifies atmospheric corrosivity by category, and the definitions are the honest way to use them: C4 covers industrial areas and coastal areas with moderate salinity; C5 covers industrial areas with high humidity and aggressive atmosphere and coastal areas with high salinity; CX covers offshore areas with high salinity, industrial areas with extreme humidity, and subtropical and tropical atmospheres. No standard assigns a category to a named place – the specification writer assigns it, and the coating system follows.

What is different about the Gulf is that chloride arrives with heat and dust rather than with rain. Salt deposited on a surface is not washed off; it is buried under dust and held there. The mechanism, and what it means for fixings, base details and the access door, is set out in the coastal lighting poles guide.

What is the supply voltage, and why does a pole care?

MEW’s Regulations for Electrical Installations, M.E.W. R-1, sixth edition 2013, clause 303, states the distribution supply as 415 volts ±6%, three phase, four wire, 50 Hz ±4%, with the neutral solidly earthed, in a TT system. Single-phase service is provided where the connected load is under 10 kVA, under clause 402.

The TT part is what matters at the pole. In a TT system the installation has its own earth electrode rather than relying on a distributor’s protective conductor, so the earthing arrangement at each column is part of the installation’s safety case rather than an afterthought. That puts the earthing terminal inside the access door on the critical path – and the access door is exactly where dust and salt collect. Specify the terminal, its material and its accessibility, not just its presence.

What has to happen at the border?

There is no free trade agreement between Türkiye and Kuwait, and none between Türkiye and the GCC. The Turkish Ministry of Trade lists the GCC only under ongoing negotiations; among GCC members, agreements in force cover the United Arab Emirates and Qatar. In December 2025 the Trade Minister confirmed that free trade talks with the GCC were still under way. There is therefore no preferential rate and no A.TR or EUR.1 route into Kuwait.

What applies instead is the GCC common external tariff, 5% on most imported goods, assessed on the CIF value and payable in Kuwaiti dinars. Around 417 basic food, agricultural, medical and pharmaceutical items are exempt; tobacco is charged at 100%. We have not read the line entry for steel structures or for lighting equipment, so treat 5% as the general rate rather than as a quotation, and have your broker confirm the tariff line.

Conformity runs through KUCAS, the Kuwait Conformity Assurance Scheme, enforced by the Public Authority for Industry. For regulated products a Technical Evaluation Report and a Technical Inspection Report must accompany the consignment for customs clearance, and the authorities may take random samples from imported consignments. The published KUCAS regulated-product list runs to six groups – electrical toys; household and commercial electrical and gas appliances; automotive; chemicals; others; and building materials such as cement, gypsum, electrical conduits and CPVC pipe. Steel structures and street lighting poles are not on that published list – but the guideline document we read is dated 2008, so confirm the current position with the Public Authority for Industry or an approved certification body before shipping. An eighteen-year-old list is a starting point, not an assurance.

One thing we could not establish: whether CE marking is accepted as evidence under KUCAS. The scheme documents call for test reports from accredited laboratories against the sanctioned standards, and do not mention CE. Ask, rather than assume.

How are Kuwaiti lighting tenders published?

Through the Central Agency for Public Tenders, under Public Tenders Law No. 49 of 2016 as amended by Law No. 74 of 2019. CAPT oversees contracts above KD 75,000, roughly 250,000 US dollars. Tender announcements are published weekly in Arabic in the official gazette, Kuwait Al-Youm; an English translation is available by subscription from translation offices rather than from the agency.

The structural point for an exporter is that foreign companies cannot sell directly to the Kuwaiti government or participate in public tenders except through a local agent. A foreign bidder may submit a bid independently, but an agent is needed for the execution phase. That is a commercial arrangement, and it belongs in the project timeline from the first week rather than the last.

What can Artay supply for a Kuwaiti project?

Cast aluminium bollards, poles and luminaire housings from our own foundry in Başakşehir, Istanbul, in EN AC-46000 (AlSi9Cu3) alloy with chromate pre-treatment before electrostatic powder coating; and hot-dip galvanized steel poles to EN ISO 1461, up to 12 m, fabricated to the EN 40 series. Luminaires are CE marked, and manufacturing is certified to TSE under TS EN 40 for lighting columns and to ISO 9001 for quality management. Ask for the certificate together with its scope; a certificate covering luminaires does not cover columns.

Bollards are worth a separate mention here, because they are one of the few outdoor categories MEW/S-1 does cover, under clause A.1.3. Artay bollards are cast aluminium rather than galvanized steel, which at bollard height is the right answer in a dusty, saline environment – the argument is set out in the bollard lights guide.

We do not make high-mast poles, and we buy in extruded aluminium profile rather than extruding it ourselves, as most of this market does. What we do make from nothing is a form. A new die is cut in our own tool shop in four to six weeks and a first delivery follows seven to nine weeks after drawing approval; repeat orders on that die ship in three weeks. Changing only height, diameter, wall thickness, arm length or RAL colour needs no die at all and carries no minimum order.

Send the tender specification, a drawing or a written requirement to info@artaylighting.com and we will return a technical drawing, a wind-load calculation and a delivery date.

Related guides

• Coastal lighting poles – chloride, corrosivity categories, fixings and cable entry.
• Street lighting poles for Iraq – the neighbouring market, and a specification that works completely differently.
• Bollard lights – why bollards are cast aluminium and never galvanized steel.
• Street lighting pole types – the four families, and how a galvanized steel pole is made.
• OEM and private label manufacturing – tooling cost, minimum order and lead times in writing.
• Lighting poles for Georgia – zero duty since 2008, diagonal cumulation with the EU, and what 2,435 mm of rain a year does to a pole.
• Lighting poles for Croatia – HRN EN editions, the exact date CE marking became mandatory, and designing for the bura.
• Lighting pole standards by country — the eight export markets side by side: what each tender cites, where it is published and what crosses the border.

The document that governs a street lighting pole in Iraq is not EN 40. The Ministry of Electricity’s own Technical Specification of Street Lighting Poles, specification number D-13, issued by the Planning and Studies Office in Baghdad, builds its requirements on IEC for the electrical side, EN 10025 for the steel grade, and ASTM A 123 or BS 729 for the galvanizing. The EN 40 series is not referenced in it at all. A European supplier who quotes EN 40 compliance and stops there has not answered the Iraqi specification.

Artay Lighting has cast aluminium in its own die-cast foundry in Istanbul since 1999 and exports to more than 33 countries. This page sets out what the Iraqi specification asks for, what the climate does to a pole that was designed for a European one, and what actually has to happen at the border.

Which standards govern a street lighting pole in Iraq?

Specification D-13 is the reference point for Ministry of Electricity street lighting work. Its revision year is 2009 with a 2013 update, and it was published in full as an annex to a UNDP procurement notice, which is where a foreign bidder can read it. The standards it names are worth listing precisely, because they are not the ones a European tender would name:

That last clause matters more than the table. It means an EN 40 pole is not excluded; it means EN 40 has to be offered as an equivalence and approved, rather than assumed. We could not confirm from a public source whether D-13 has been revised again since 2013, so the practical step before quoting is to ask the contracting authority which revision applies to that tender. Anyone who tells you the revision without checking is guessing.

What does the Iraqi specification actually require?

These are the numbers from D-13. They are unusual enough that a pole designed for a European road will not meet several of them without being redesigned.

Two of these deserve a second look. 140 km/h is about 39 m/s, which is a high design wind by European road-lighting standards and drives wall thickness and base diameter rather than being absorbed by a safety factor. And the galvanizing requirement is stated twice, as a thickness and as a mass per unit area, which is worth doing the arithmetic on. Zinc has a density of about 7.14 g/cm³, so 500 g/m² is roughly 70 µm, while 85 µm is roughly 600 g/m². The thickness figure is the stricter of the two, and a galvanizing certificate that reports only mass per unit area does not on its own show that the 85 µm requirement has been met.

We supply the 7, 10 and 12 m sizes in that table. We do not make high-mast poles, and the two-piece 15 m type is outside what we manufacture. Saying so at quotation stage costs a line item and saves a claim later.

Why does 55 °C change the pole rather than only the luminaire?

Because heat and dust reach the pole through the parts that are not steel. The gasket at the access door, the sealing at the cable entry, the label adhesive, the terminal block insulation and the coating itself all have a service temperature, and a component rated for a European summer sits at the top of its range for months in Basra rather than for a week.

The published climate figures behind the specification are stark. In southern Iraq, June to August, average temperatures pass 40 °C in the day and fall only to around 30 °C at night, while northern Iraq sits nearer 25 °C in July and August; in recent years the temperature in Baghdad and Basra has repeatedly exceeded 50 °C. Average annual precipitation across the country is 179 mm, and under 100 mm in the south and west. Those figures are from the Climate Risk Profile for Iraq published by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and adelphi in 2022.

Dust is the second half of the problem, and it is measured. The same profile records that Iraq’s Ministry of Environment counted 122 dust storms and 283 dusty days in 2014, and projected that the country could see 300 dust storms a year within a decade. Airborne sand does two things to a pole: it abrades the coating on the windward face, and it enters every aperture that is not sealed. A door gasket specified for rain is not a door gasket specified for dust, and the earthing point inside the door is what corrodes first once dust and the occasional humid night get in together.

What about corrosion in Basra and the south?

Near the Gulf the question changes from heat to chloride. ISO 12944-2 classifies atmospheric corrosivity in categories, and its own descriptions are the honest way to use them: C3 covers urban and industrial atmospheres with moderate sulfur dioxide levels and coastal areas with low salinity; C4 covers industrial areas and coastal areas with moderate salinity; C5 covers industrial areas with high humidity and aggressive atmosphere and coastal areas with high salinity; CX covers offshore areas with high salinity, industrial areas with extreme humidity, and subtropical and tropical atmospheres.

No standard assigns a category to a named city, and anyone who tells you Basra “is C5” is offering judgment rather than a citation. What a specification can do is state the category it requires and let the coating system follow from it. The mechanism, and what it means for fixings, base details and cable entry, is set out in the coastal lighting poles guide – the chemistry near the Gulf is the same chemistry as the Mediterranean, in a hotter and dustier form.

What has to happen at the border?

There is no free trade agreement between Türkiye and Iraq. Iraq does not appear on the Turkish Ministry of Trade’s list of free trade agreements; the relationship runs through a Joint Economic Commission and, since an April 2024 memorandum, a Joint Economic and Trade Commission. Duty is therefore ordinary Iraqi customs duty under Customs Tariff Law No. 22 of 2010, not a preferential rate, and there is no A.TR or EUR.1 shortcut.

Iraq’s tariff schedule is also in motion. Cabinet Decision No. 957, reported as approved in late October 2025, revises rates across roughly 16,400 tariff items into brackets running from 0.5% to 30%, with enforcement reported to begin in early 2026, and it is the subject of a constitutional challenge on the ground that duties may only be imposed by law. We are not going to publish a rate for a lighting column against that background. Ask your customs broker for the rate on the day, and get it in writing.

Separately, imports into Iraq fall under ICIGI, the pre-import inspection, testing and certification programme mandated by the Central Organization for Standardization and Quality Control. Where a product is on the regulated list, a Certificate of Conformity is required for customs clearance and is valid for six months, and an updated product standards list took effect on 17 June 2025. Whether street lighting columns sit on that regulated list is not something we could establish from a public source – so confirm it with a CoC issuing body before the container moves, rather than after.

One thing we can rule out. The Iraqi Quality Mark introduced under COSQC Announcement No. 15 of 2024, with a compliance deadline of 1 July 2024, applies to named categories – electric water heaters, heaters, ovens, refrigerators, freezers, air conditioners and tobacco products. Lighting poles are not among them.

How are Iraqi lighting tenders published?

There is no single national e-procurement portal of the kind Greece, Croatia or Georgia operate. The General Government Contracts Department of the Ministry of Planning develops the standard contract documents, audits contracting procedures and maintains contractor blacklists, under Government Contracts Implementation Instructions No. 2 of 2014. Tenders themselves surface through individual ministry websites, the Official Gazette, UNDP Iraq procurement notices and World Bank project notices.

Documents are in Arabic, and financial statements submitted in another language have to be translated and notarised. In practice a foreign manufacturer bids either through an Iraqi branch or with a local agent or partner, because execution normally requires a presence in country. That is a commercial arrangement rather than a technical one, but it shapes the timeline more than anything in the specification does.

What can Artay supply for an Iraqi project?

Hot-dip galvanized steel poles to EN ISO 1461, up to 12 m, fabricated to the EN 40 series and offered against D-13 as an equivalence; cast aluminium poles, bollards and luminaire housings from our own foundry in Başakşehir, Istanbul, in EN AC-46000 (AlSi9Cu3) alloy with chromate pre-treatment before electrostatic powder coating; and combinations of the two. Luminaires are CE marked, and manufacturing is certified to TSE under TS EN 40 for lighting columns and to ISO 9001 for quality management. Ask for the certificate together with its scope – a certificate covering luminaires does not cover columns, and the two are routinely confused in tender documents.

We do not make high-mast poles, and we buy in extruded aluminium profile rather than extruding it ourselves, as most of this market does. What we do make from nothing is a form: because the aluminium is cast rather than fabricated, a governorate can have a pole of its own, carrying its own emblem in the base. A new die is cut in our own tool shop in four to six weeks and a first delivery follows seven to nine weeks after drawing approval; repeat orders on that die ship in three weeks. Changing only height, diameter, wall thickness, arm length or RAL colour needs no die at all and carries no minimum order.

Send the tender specification, a drawing or a written requirement to info@artaylighting.com and we will return a technical drawing with a wind-load calculation at the design velocity the tender states, a galvanizing declaration, and a delivery date.

Related guides

• Street lighting pole types – the four families, and how a galvanized steel pole is actually made, step by step.
• Coastal lighting poles – chloride, corrosivity categories, fixings and cable entry.
• What drives the cost of a lighting pole – where the money goes, and why unit prices are not published.
• OEM and private label manufacturing – tooling cost, minimum order and lead times in writing.
• Lighting pole materials – galvanized steel, cast aluminium and extruded profile compared.
• Lighting poles for Kuwait – why MEW/S-1 excludes street lighting columns, and what applies instead.
• Lighting poles for Georgia – zero duty since 2008, diagonal cumulation with the EU, and what 2,435 mm of rain a year does to a pole.
• Lighting poles for Greece – the ELOT technical specification a tender actually cites, CE marking and the A.TR certificate.
• The EN 40 series explained – which part does what, which one carries CE marking, and what EN 40 leaves to other standards.
• Lighting pole standards by country — the eight export markets side by side: what each tender cites, where it is published and what crosses the border.

There is no list price for a lighting pole, and a supplier who gives you one before asking about height, quantity and coating is quoting a different product from the one you need. Two poles that look identical in a photograph can differ by a factor of three in price, and almost all of that difference sits in things a drawing does not show: wall thickness, zinc thickness, whether the form needs tooling, and how many you are buying.

Artay Lighting has cast aluminium in its own die-cast foundry in Istanbul since 1999 and exports to more than 33 countries. This page explains what actually moves the number, which figures we do publish, and how to compare two quotations that appear to be for the same pole.

What actually drives the price of a lighting pole?

In rough order of impact: material and weight first. A pole is priced from the metal in it, so wall thickness matters more than height — a 9 m pole with a 4 mm wall costs materially more than the same pole at 3 mm, and only the calculation tells you which one the site needs. This is the commonest place where a cheap quotation is cheap for a reason. Material is the first of those drivers, and the choice between the two is set out in aluminium or galvanized steel: which should you specify.

Protection is second. Hot-dip galvanizing to EN ISO 1461 is priced by weight and by coating thickness; a duplex system with paint over the zinc costs more again. On aluminium, the chromate pre-treatment before powder coating is a real process step with a real cost, and it is the first thing a low quotation quietly omits.

Form is third, and it is a step change rather than a slope: a shape that exists costs what it costs, while a shape that does not exist needs a die. Fabrication detail is fourth — arms, door apertures, base plate patterns, cable entries and earthing points are all labour. Quantity is fifth and affects everything above it. Freight is last but not small; poles are long, awkward and mostly air, and a container that could hold twenty 4 m poles will not hold twenty 10 m ones.

Does a decorative form cost more than a plain one?

Only if the form does not exist yet. This is the distinction most suppliers blur, so here it is plainly. Changing the dimensions of an existing pole — height, diameter, wall thickness, arm length, door position, base plate pattern, RAL colour — carries no tooling cost and no minimum order, because those are cutting and rolling parameters.

Changing the form means casting a shape that does not yet exist, which needs a die: a one-time cost of 4,000–50,000 USD depending on part size, a minimum order of 1,000–2,000 units, 4–6 weeks to cut the die and 3 weeks of series production, so first delivery lands 7–9 weeks after drawing approval. Every repeat order on that die ships in 3 weeks with no further mould charge and no minimum.

That last sentence is the whole economics. The tooling is an entry cost, not a per-project cost, which is why the second project on a die is cheaper and faster than a standard order. If your quantity does not reach the minimum, say so early — often the form can be achieved in fabricated steel or extruded profile with no die at all, and we will tell you that rather than sell you tooling you do not need.

What is usually missing from a lighting pole quotation?

Comparing two quotations is mostly a matter of finding what one of them left out. The usual omissions, in the order they cause arguments: anchor bolts and the base template, which are sometimes quoted with the pole and sometimes not; arms and brackets, and whether the spigot diameter matches the luminaire — 60 mm and 76 mm are the common sizes and they are not interchangeable; the access door, its lock and the earthing point inside it; packing, because poles need timber and strapping that a per-piece price rarely includes; and freight and loading terms, which on a long product can move the landed cost more than the pole specification does.

Two more that only surface later. Coating warranty — a generic figure quoted for all environments is a warranty written for the inland case, and on a coastal site it is worth asking for the coastal figure separately. And spare availability: if the pole is a cast form, ask whether the die stays available, because a replacement in year twelve is either the same pole or the nearest current model.

How should you compare two quotations?

Why do we not publish unit prices?

Because a unit price without a quantity, a wall thickness and a coating specification is a number that will be wrong by the time you use it. Steel and aluminium move, freight moves, and the same model at 50 units and at 2,000 units is not the same commercial proposition. A published price list in this category is either out of date or written for a specification nobody ordered.

What we do publish are the figures that do not move with the market and that almost nobody else states: tooling cost, minimum order, and lead times for both the first and repeat orders. Those are the numbers a buyer needs to plan around, and they are on this page and on the OEM and private label page.

Send a drawing, a 3D model, a photograph or a written specification with the quantity to info@artaylighting.com and we will come back with a technical drawing, a wind-load calculation and a price for that specification.

Related guides

• OEM and private label manufacturing — mould cost, minimum order and repeat-order lead times in full.
• Lighting pole materials — galvanized steel, cast aluminium and extruded profile compared.
• Street lighting pole types — the four families and what each is good at.
• Coastal lighting poles — what changes in a seaside specification.
• How to compare Turkish pole manufacturers — what nine of them publish about casting, standards and lead times.
• Street lighting poles for Iraq – what Ministry of Electricity specification D-13 requires, and why EN 40 alone is not an answer there.
• Lighting poles for Georgia – zero duty since 2008, diagonal cumulation with the EU, and what 2,435 mm of rain a year does to a pole.
• Lighting poles for Serbia – SRPS EN designations, CE alongside the domestic 3A mark, and a Serbian-language Declaration of Performance.
• Lighting poles for Kosovo – CE recognised in law, but duty on industrial goods is still being phased out.
• Lighting poles for Moldova – the EN 40 series named by the energy regulator, and a 64-degree annual range.
• The EN 40 series explained – which part does what, which one carries CE marking, and what EN 40 leaves to other standards.
• Garden and landscape lighting — mounting heights, EN 13201 P classes and the obtrusive light zones that decide a park or garden scheme.
• Lighting pole standards by country — the eight export markets side by side: what each tender cites, where it is published and what crosses the border.

OEM lighting pole manufacturing has two completely different price structures, and most suppliers answer as if it were one question. Changing the dimensions of an existing pole — height, diameter, wall thickness, arm length, door position, base plate pattern, RAL colour — carries no tooling cost and no minimum order, because those are cutting and rolling parameters. Changing the form means casting a shape that does not yet exist, which needs a die: a one-time cost of 4,000–50,000 USD and a minimum order of 1,000–2,000 units. Knowing which of the two you are asking for is the whole negotiation.

Artay Lighting has cast aluminium in its own die-cast foundry in Istanbul since 1999, exports to more than 33 countries, and manufactures under other brands’ names as a matter of routine. This page sets out what we can and cannot do under OEM and private label, what it costs, how long it takes, and what a distributor should ask before placing a first order.

What is the difference between OEM and private label here?

In this market the two words are used loosely, so it is worth being precise. Private label normally means an existing Artay model supplied under your brand: your name on the product, your catalogue, your packaging and documentation, with the design unchanged. OEM normally means we manufacture to your design or your modification of ours — a different form, a different housing, a base carrying your emblem — and the tooling for that form is cut for you.

The commercial consequence is simple. Private label has no tooling cost and no minimum beyond a normal production run, so it can start small. OEM with a new form has a tooling cost and a minimum, and it makes sense when the volume justifies owning a shape nobody else can supply.

What does OEM tooling cost, and how long does it take?

These are the figures, published because almost nobody in this category publishes them and a distributor cannot plan without them.

The point worth planning around is the last row of that table. The first order on a new form is the expensive one; every order after it ships in three weeks with no minimum and no further tooling charge. Distributors who treat the mould as an entry cost rather than a per-project cost get the economics right.

What can be branded, and what cannot?

Under private label the brand appears where you would expect it: the product marking, the packaging, the catalogue and the technical documentation supplied with the order. Under OEM with a new die, the form itself can carry a brand element — a municipality’s emblem in a base, a housing profile matched to a facade, a column silhouette unique to one city — because a cast part comes from a mould and the mould is cut to your drawing.

What does not change is the certification chain. Artay luminaires are CE marked, and manufacturing is certified to TSE under TS EN 40 for lighting columns and to ISO 9001 for quality management. Those certificates are issued to the manufacturer and describe the manufacturing, whoever the product is branded for. Ask for the certificate together with its scope and expiry — and read the scope, because a certificate covering luminaires does not cover columns, and the two are frequently confused in tender documents.

What do we actually make?

Cast aluminium is the core: bollards, urban and decorative pole components and luminaire housings, cast in our own foundry in Başakşehir, Istanbul, in EN AC-46000 (AlSi9Cu3) alloy, with a chromate pre-treatment before electrostatic powder coating. Alongside it we fabricate hot-dip galvanized steel poles to EN ISO 1461, up to 12 m, specified to the EN 40 series, and we fabricate from extruded aluminium profile. Which of the two a given product should be made from is a separate question, answered in aluminium or galvanized steel: which should you specify.

Two things we say plainly, because a distributor finds them out eventually anyway. We do not make high-mast poles. And we buy in extruded aluminium profile rather than extruding it ourselves, as most of this market does; what is ours is the die-casting and the tool shop behind it.

What should a distributor ask before the first order?

Ask whether the supplier owns the casting or buys it in, because that determines whether a form change is a negotiation or an impossibility. Ask for the mould cost and the minimum in writing, separately from the unit price. Ask what the repeat-order lead time is on an existing tool, since that is the number you will live with. Ask who holds the tooling and on what terms. Ask for the certificate scope rather than the certificate logo. And ask what pre-treatment is applied before coating — “powder coated” on its own is not an answer, and on coastal projects it is the detail that decides year eight.

We answer all of those before an order rather than after it, and the figures above are the same ones we quote.

How to start

Send a drawing, a 3D model, a photograph of a form you have seen, or simply a written specification to info@artaylighting.com. We return a technical drawing with a wind-load calculation, the tooling cost if a new die is needed, and a delivery date. If the quantity does not justify a mould, we will say so and propose the form in fabricated steel or extruded profile instead.

Related guides

• What drives the cost of a lighting pole — what moves the price, what a quotation leaves out, and how to compare two of them.
• Street lighting pole types — the four families, and what a custom form costs in each.
• Lighting pole materials — galvanized steel, cast aluminium and extruded profile compared.
• How to compare Turkish pole manufacturers — what nine of them publish about casting, standards and lead times.
• Ancient cities collection — the fifty models available under private label.
• Street lighting poles — heights, standards and what a custom pole costs.
• Street lighting poles for Iraq – what Ministry of Electricity specification D-13 requires, and why EN 40 alone is not an answer there.
• Lighting poles for Kuwait – why MEW/S-1 excludes street lighting columns, and what applies instead.
• Lighting poles for Serbia – SRPS EN designations, CE alongside the domestic 3A mark, and a Serbian-language Declaration of Performance.
• Lighting poles for Moldova – the EN 40 series named by the energy regulator, and a 64-degree annual range.
• The EN 40 series explained – which part does what, which one carries CE marking, and what EN 40 leaves to other standards.