The Food Bank of Central & Eastern North Carolina (FBCENC), a nonprofit organization that provides food for people at risk of hunger in 34 counties in central and eastern North Carolina, selected LED lighting from Cree, Inc. (Nasdaq: CREE) to light its new Raleigh, N.C. distribution and community center. The 85,000 square-foot facility is illuminated by Cree® CXB Series High-Bay LED luminaires, ZR24™ troffers and KR6™ downlights, delivering better light quality while generating nearly 50 percent energy savings compared to traditional options.

“We searched for the right community partners to help us achieve our goals for this facility,” said Charlie Hale, FBCENC VP of IT and operations. “Cree’s lighting solution provided an opportunity to install something that is not only more energy efficient but avoids maintenance issues while helping improve our operations. The new lighting has provided an enhanced workspace on all fronts, including ensuring that volunteers can see clearly when repackaging and sorting food items. They no longer have to use their cell phone flashlights to properly read the labels.”

Installed throughout the warehouse, Cree’s CXB Series High-Bay luminaires offer better light quality and uniformity that eliminate hot and cool spots while delivering superior energy efficiency, thus lowering operating costs. Powered by Cree TrueWhite® Technology, the ZR24 troffers are installed throughout the office space to provide a comfortable, well-lit environment with excellent light quality, while the KR6 downlights deliver high-quality light to complete the office lighting.

FBCENC moved its operations, food distribution, and community services to the new location in order to continue serving those facing hunger in Raleigh and the surrounding area. The new distribution and community center allows for expanded services to fight hunger in the Triangle and across central and eastern North Carolina, with more freezer and cooler space for perishable foods, additional room for thousands of hours of increased volunteer time, increased loading dock space to get more food out to neighbors quickly and safely, and upgraded systems, such as the lighting, to increase efficiency.

With major renovations in place, the new facility provides additional space for nutrition education and outreach that will help improve food systems throughout its service area so community members can permanently move out of the state of food insecurity. Cree’s lighting is proving to be a key contributor to helping FBCENC effectively spread the word on these enhanced services.

“The new lighting has enabled us to get our story out to the community in a more vibrant fashion than we otherwise could have,” said Jessica Whichard, FBCENC senior manager of communications. “We’ve been shooting quite a few videos inside and the production teams have been really impressed with the lighting. The facility looks just phenomenal in the videos. It has also helped us to enhance our social media presence with higher quality images from volunteers at work. Our facility managers and volunteers, in particular, have commented on how great the lighting is when they walk into the space.”

The Cree CXB Series High-Bay luminaires offer efficiency of up to 113 lumens per watt at CRI of 80+, and the ZR24 troffers produce up to 5000 lumens at CRI of 90.

Please visit http://lighting.cree.com/applications/case-studies/foodbankcenc to read the full case study and view images of the installation.

About Cree

Cree is a market-leading innovator of lighting-class LEDs, lighting products and semiconductor products for power and radio frequency (RF) applications. Cree believes in better light experiences and is delivering new innovative LED technology that transforms the way people experience light through high-quality interior and exterior LED lighting solutions.

Cree’s product families include LED lighting systems and bulbs, blue and green LED chips, high-brightness LEDs, lighting-class power LEDs, power-switching devices and RF devices. Cree’s products are driving improvements in applications such as general illumination, electronic signs and signals, power supplies and inverters.

This press release contains forward-looking statements involving risks and uncertainties, both known and unknown, that may cause actual results to differ materially from those indicated. Actual results may differ materially due to a number of factors, including the risk that actual savings and lifetimes will vary from expectations; the risk we may be unable to manufacture these new products with sufficiently low cost to offer them at competitive prices or with acceptable margins; the risk we may encounter delays or other difficulties in ramping up production of our new products; customer acceptance of our new products; the rapid development of new technology and competing products that may impair demand or render Cree’s products obsolete; and other factors discussed in Cree’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its report on Form 10-K for the year ended June 26, 2016, and subsequent filings.

Please refer to www.cree.com for additional product and Company information.

Cree®, Cree TrueWhite® and TrueWhite® are registered trademarks and ZR24™ and KR6™ are trademarks of Cree, Inc.