NEWS RELEASE                                                                            July 2017

Valve Sales Concentrated among 2500 Purchasers

Industrial valve sales exceeded $58 billion last year. Five hundred and fifty-five companies bought 40 percent of the total. 1500 companies accounted for 60 percent of the total. 2500 companies purchased 70 percent of all valves. Sinopec which is the largest oil and gas producer and is also a large refiner and EPC purchased nearly 2 percent of the total. The top five oil and gas companies purchased nearly 5 percent of all valves. The top five power companies purchased 1.5 percent of all valves. The top 10 chemical companies purchased over 1 percent of all valves. Therefore, the top 20 purchasers accounted for 7.5 percent of the total. This is the latest tally in the McIlvaine industrial valve market report N028 Industrial Valves: World Market.

The 555 companies are in 13 different industries. There are only 15 electronics companies included in the group. Valve sales are much lower to this group than most of the others. The water and wastewater valve sales are substantial. However, there are relatively few large purchasers. For example the Metropolitan Sanitary District of Chicago spent $10 million for valves, but this is only 0.25 percent of the total valves purchased for the wastewater utility segment and is less than .02 percent of the valve total. None of the publicly owned utilities has even a 1 percent share. On the other hand, a few private companies have larger shares. Suez operates 50 percent of water and wastewater plants in Chile, is active in China and other Asian countries, has a significant share in France and is active elsewhere in Europe. It accounts for more than 0.5 percent of the total when both water and wastewater utility purchases are included.

The top 200 companies purchased 39 percent of the world’s chemical valves in 2016.

Coal-fired plants represent the largest purchasing segment in power. Coal purchases are more than twice as large as those for nuclear or gas turbine plants. The top five operators purchased over 36 percent of the total valves purchased by coal-fired power plants. The top 15 companies purchased 55 percent of the total.

The rankings keep changing for multiple reasons. Mergers are one factor. Also some of the industries such as oil and gas are volatile whereas others such as pharmaceutical are steady. The advent of IIoT will lead to more mergers due to the economics of scale with automation and with remote monitoring and control by third parties who take over valve maintenance and replacement. The details are found in N031 Industrial IOT and Remote O&M.