The world market for pumps will grow from just under $30 billion this year to $49 billion/yr by 2016, according to a report by the McIlvaine Company (www.mcilvainecompany.com), titled “Pumps: World Markets.”
While world GDP will grow only 4 percent per year during the next ten years, the pump market will grow at 5 percent per year, predicts McIlvaine. This is despite growth of only 1 to 2 percent per year in some regions and sectors, such as European basic industry (steel, chemicals, pulp and paper).
McIlvaine Company bases its growth forecast on the following major drivers: new energy sources, urbanization of Asia, and investment in water infrastructure.
According to McIlvaine, the scarcity of oil and gas is leading to immense investments in substitute fuels. McIlvaine predicts the synthetic fuels program, including coal liquefaction and tar sands and oil shale, will boost pump sales by hundreds of millions of dollars/yr.
In addition, McIlvaine predicts the use of LNG (liquid natural gas) to replace conventional gas will result in significant pump investments at the liquefaction sites, on the tankers delivering the liquefied gas, and at the regasification terminals.
There is also a boom in the construction of coal-fired power plants, producing an upswing in demand for a variety of pumps, including those for high-pressure services in the steam cycle, water and wastewater, and for the big scrubbers required to capture the SO2. China and the U.S. are expected to be the biggest purchasers.
Meanwhile, pumps figure to see significant demand as a result of the construction of Ethanol facilities, which require pumps to deliver the water and process the corn or sugar cane into fuel.
According to McIlvaine, the most important factor in the growth of the pump industry will be the increasing demand for decreasing supplies of uncontaminated water. Remediation of contaminated ground water, desalination of seawater, and other treatment processes will increasingly be needed to make use of this finite resource. Asia has less available water per capita than other continents and will also have a more rapidly increasing demand for delivery and treatment of that water, notes McIlvaine. Therefore, almost half the investment in pumps for water-related applications is expected to come from Asia.
Courtesy of Flow Research
