Industrial Pump Revenues Will Exceed $38 Billion Next Year

Sales of industrial pumps will exceed $38 billion in 2013 according to the latest forecasts in Pumps World Markets published by the McIlvaine Company (USA).

Thirty-two percent of the market next year will be in East Asia. China will spend more for power plant pumps than the rest of the word combined. China will be the leading purchaser of pumps for municipal drinking water and municipal wastewater. The migration of hundreds of millions of people from rural areas to Chinese cities has created the need for infrastructure investment.

The investment for oil and gas pumps will help boost the NAFTA pump market next hear to just under $8 billion. Pumps for hydrofracturing of shale are in short supply. The significant expenditures in Pennsylvania are being exceeded by those in North Dakota and adjacent states which are able to extract oil from shale.

The African and South/Central Americas regions will benefit from an increase investment in mining pumps. These include not only the pumps used for processes such as size reduction and separation, but for the transport of slurries for long distances from the mine to the processing plant. The mines are often hundreds of miles from the coast where the processing plant and ultimate shipment take place. Transportation of the ore as a slurry is often the most economical mode. Gold, copper and iron ore processes utilise slurries. Even if the mine is a short distance from the processing plant, a slurry pipeline is the most economic choice. Coal is typically washed and, therefore, delivery as slurry to the plant is not a problem. For dry processing operations, there is justification for slurry pipelines only if distances exceed 200 km or there is no road or infrastructure for alternative delivery.

High growth areas for pump suppliers include aquaculture, ballast water treatment and desalination. The recent announcement of a large new desalination plant in California is indicative of the increasing attractiveness of seawater vs. freshwater for new water supplies.