Lightera LATAM S.A. has published its first Environmental Product Declaration, and the timing is good. The EPD was issued in June 2026 through EPD Hub. It covers one of the company's flagship outdoor fiber products. In a market where buyers increasingly ask for carbon data before they ask for a quote, this is a meaningful first step.
What Lightera LATAM published
The debut is a single, product-specific EPD for the AccuRoll Dry Core (DC) Rollable Ribbon Fiber Optic Cable with Metallic Sheath. The cable uses a gel-free dry central tube with water-blocking tape and holds up to 36 numbered rollable ribbon units in 12-fiber ribbons, for counts from 12 to 288 fibers. A metallic sheath around the core makes it a rugged outside-plant design.
This is one product family, not a portfolio-wide release. The EPD follows the EPD Hub Core PCR (version 1.1), a generic construction-product rulebook aligned with EN 15804+A2, and it is valid into 2031. EC3 lists Lightera LATAM itself as the developer organization and names no outside LCA consultant. That suggests the LCA work was largely done in-house or that the consultant simply wasn't recorded.
Who Lightera is and why this matters now
Lightera launched as a single global brand on April 1, 2025, combining Furukawa Electric LatAm, OFS and Furukawa Electric Fiber and Cable. The Latin American operation goes back to 1974 in Brazil, when it started as Furukawa Industrial S/A (Lightera, 2025). Today it makes optical fiber, cables and connectivity for operators, data centers, enterprises and smart city projects.
The demand behind those products is growing fast. Global data center electricity use is projected to roughly double from about 415 TWh in 2024 to around 945 TWh by 2030 (IEA, 2025). Hyperscale and colocation owners report on embodied carbon more than almost anyone else, and high-fiber-count rollable ribbon cable is the backbone of their campuses. A verified EPD lets that cable count toward their carbon reporting without being charged a conservative default value.
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How the competition stacks up
Several of the biggest names in fiber already hold current EPDs. Corning has P.E.P. ecopassport EPDs for its SMF-28 Ultra fiber, for optical fiber made in North America and EMEA, and for MIC tight-buffered indoor cables, all valid until 2029 or 2030. CommScope has EPDs for indoor/outdoor plenum premises distribution cables and LSZH all-dielectric fiber cables issued via ASTM International. Panduit added EPDs for plenum and LSZH fiber trunk cable assemblies through Smart EPD in May 2026.
There is a pattern in that list. Most competitor fiber EPDs cover bare fiber, indoor premises cable or factory-terminated assemblies. Among the competitors we reviewed, we found no other current EPD for an outside-plant, metallic-sheathed rollable ribbon cable. Lightera LATAM's AccuRoll declaration fills that gap.
Others in the space have even less. Sterlite Technologies shows no current EPDs in EC3, only one expired declaration. Superior Essex Communications has 67 expired EPDs and none current. Lightera's own sister company Furukawa Electric holds an EPD for a recycled-HDPE cable trough but none for fiber cable, and searches for AFL, Fujikura and Hexatronic returned no matching EPD listings.
Catching up and pulling ahead at once
The takeaway has two parts. Against Corning, CommScope and Panduit, Lightera LATAM is catching up and has earned a seat at the table on projects that require EPDs. On outside-plant rollable ribbon cable specifically, it may be ahead, since no matching competitor declaration turned up.
It helps to think of it as a passport. Without one, a product can still be good, but it can't cross certain borders. LEED v5 rewards projects for using products with verified environmental data, and embodied carbon targets on large campuses are getting stricter. Without an EPD, specifiers usually have to plug in conservative generic values, often with a penalty added on top. A product-specific EPD removes that disadvantage, so the cable is judged on its performance and price, not on a missing document.
One technical note for spec teams: the main competitor EPDs mostly follow P.E.P. rules for wires and cables, while Lightera used the EPD Hub Core PCR. Comparing results across different PCRs needs care. That doesn't take away from the win, but it is worth thinking about when choosing the PCR for future declarations.
Getting the EPD seen by specifiers
As of early November 2026, the AccuRoll EPD did not appear on Lightera's sustainability page or its AccuRoll product pages. The sustainability page covers strategy, the UN SDGs and quarterly reporting to the parent company, but has no EPD download. Visibility matters as much as verification, and we recommend that Lightera add the EPD to its product datasheets and sustainability hub, where engineers and procurement teams look first.
The EPD was issued in June, but it only reached the global directory specifiers use months later. That delay is normal. It often takes weeks to months for an EPD issued by a program operator to show up in the databases architects and carbon consultants actually search. Every week of delay is a week when the product looks undocumented to the people building their bill of materials. Shortening that gap should definately be a priority for future releases. Readers who want to know how to get new EPDs listed within a day or two are welcome to contact the author directly.
A strong first EPD to build on
One EPD doesn't cover a whole catalog, but this was a smart one to start with. Lightera LATAM chose a high-fiber-count outdoor cable that serves the fastest-growing part of its market, and it filled a gap its larger competitors have left open. The obvious next steps are more AccuRoll variants, the 200 µm versions and indoor ribbon cables, so that a full fiber route can be documented from the street into the data hall.
Congratulations to the Lightera LATAM team on joining the market for transparent product data. Specifiers now have verified numbers for this cable, and competitors without EPDs have one less argument to make.
