Pump Market to Reach $49 Billion by 2016

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. This is despite growth of only 1 – 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 the investment in water infrastructure.

Pumps play an important role in oil and gas production, refining, and power generation. The scarcity of oil and gas is leading to immense investments in substitute fuels. The investment in pumps required for just new tar sands plants in Alberta will exceed $50 million/yr. The synthetic fuels program including coal liquefaction as well as tar sands and oil shale will boost pump sales by hundreds of millions of dollars/yr.

The use of LNG 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 a boom in the construction of coal-fired power plants and along with it 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. will be the biggest purchasers.

Ethanol facilities require pumps to deliver the water and process the corn or sugar cane into fuel. Hundreds of these plants will be built in the next decade.

The urbanization of Asia involves the relocation of more than one billion people from the farms to the cities. This will create a huge need for infrastructure including delivery of drinking water and removal and treatment of wastewater. Rapid growth of the pump market in Asia will also be aided by large investments in pulp and paper, chemical, steel, and other basic industries.

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. Therefore, almost half the investment in pumps for water-related applications will come from Asia.

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