Valves and Actuators
2011 Edition - Valves and Actuators - available now for purchase and download
The annual report provides a five-year forecast for 63 countries. The key to our approach is a detailed forecast of valve and actuator requirements by end use industry. The sub-division by industry is chosen to identify those with intensive processing of liquids or gases.
Our study of major engineering projects shows that each end use industry has a different requirement for valves and actuators. To a large extent this is determined by technology, so a detailed sub-division of demand by end use industry is essential when forecasting valve and actuator requirements. This procedure provides a solid basis for forecasting demand for ‘competitive’ valve types in total, and for safety/relief, pressure reducing, control valves and check valves.
Our use of the term ‘competitive’ identifies valve types that can often be substituted for one another. These consist of gate, globe, check, ball, plug, butterfly, and diaphragm. Even in these instances technology remains a major determinant of demand (e.g. high use of ball valves in oil and gas), but the possibility of substitution means that we cannot simply assume a constant usage rate by valve type in each end use industry across all our 63 countries. Custom in particular countries results in a higher proportion of particular valve types being used than expected from the pattern of demand by end use industry. Examples are a relatively high use of ball valves, relative to gate valves, in the USA, and a relatively high use of globe valves, relative to gate valves, in Germany. We take account of the different usage rates in particular countries because we track the historical trends in production, imports and exports by valve type for each of the 63 countries, and this influences our forecasts for the sub-division of demand for competitive valve types.
As a result of our approach we can identify demand for valves in industries with radically different characteristics. For example, processing corrosive chemicals in low temperature applications has radically different valve requirements from those for handling high temperature products in oil refineries.
The demand for valve actuators is estimated from estimates of valve requirements by end use industry. Control valve actuators are relatively easy to identify, being concentrated in hydrocarbon processing industries. It is more difficult to measure market size for on-off actuators (although the concentration of demand by end use industry is easy to identify) because there are a large number of suppliers and there is the prospect of retrofit which is difficult to assess.