LCGC Market Profile: Chemicals and Petrochemicals Demand for Chromatography

The global economy is currently going through something it has not experienced in nearly a decade. The major geographic segments are performing well with overall production increasing. This is typically a strong indicator that the demand for chromatography products in the chemical and petrochemicals industry will also perform well.

The chemicals market has been in flux during the last 10 years because of the interplay of crude oil and natural gas. During the early part of the decade, the industry saw high crude oil prices, which led users to switch to feedstocks originating from natural gas. In 2015 and 2016, oil prices dropped significantly, which affected production of shale oil. These changes in feedstocks in the chemicals industry created a degree of uncertainty that ultimately caused the chemical industry to pause its investment in new equipment.

Optimism began to percolate in 2017 in the market, which has led to new investments for increased capacity to keep up with global growth for chemical production and energy. Shale-based investments in the US will drive growth as new plants come online over the next several years that will likely boost sales of new instruments. Demand for chromatography products in Europe will also be robust with continued research and development investments from chemical companies, while demand in China, India, Indonesia, and Korea continues to expand.

The laboratory market for chromatography instruments is led by Agilent, Shimadzu, Thermo Fisher Scientific, and Waters. With the exception of Waters, these leading vendors maintain a significant share of both gas chromatography and highpressure liquid chromatography. For process analytical instruments, the market is led by ABB , Siemens, and Yokogawa.

The market posted somewhat pedestrian growth for 2017 due to somewhat lackluster performance during the first half of the year. However, the second half of 2017 saw a change in momentum toward positive growth, which is expected to carry into 2018. Overall, the 2017 market for chromatography in the chemicals and petrochemicals sector accounted for about $1.5 billion and is expected to post solid growth over the next few years fueled by robust demand in the US and Asia.

2017 chemicals and petrochem industry demand for chromatography products by region.

Market size and growth estimates were adopted from TDA’s Industry Data, a database of technology market profiles and benchmarks, as well as the 2018 Instrument Industry Outlook report from independent market research firm Top-Down Analytics. For more information, contact Glenn Cudiamat, general manager, at (888) 953-5655 or glenn.cudiamat@tdaresearch.com. Glenn is a market research expert who has been coveringthe analytical instrumentation industry for more than two decades.