This is the latest forecast from the McIlvaine Co., Northbrook, Ill., as outlined in Pumps: World Markets, a continually updated, online report.
While world gross domestic product will grow only 4 percent per year during the next 10 years, the pump market will grow at 5 percent per year. This is despite growth of only 1 percent to 2 percent per year in some regions and sectors such as European basic industry (steel, chemicals, pulp and paper).
McIlvaine Co. bases its growth forecast on the following major drivers: new energy sources, urbanization of Asia, and the investment in water infrastructure.
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 also will 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.
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 also will be aided by large investments in pulp and paper, chemical, steel and other basic industries.
Pumps also 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 per year.
According to the report, 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 per year.
The use of liquefied 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 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 United States are expected to 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.
