NEWS RELEASE                                                                                         October 2018

October Valve Update has Insights on a Range of Important Topics

The market outlook for the industrial valve industry is ever changing. The marketing plan and the supporting forecasts should be current. N028 Industrial Valves: World Market provides continuing adjustment of 50,000 forecasts. There are also monthly updates such as the one for October 2018. Here is a summary of that update and a link to the full text.

Creating a Winning Strategy for the Valve Market (3 pages)

There is now the opportunity to make market research and associated technical analysis the foundation of a business strategy rather than a peripheral tool. Sales leads are used because the supplier does not understand customer needs. If the supplier has detailed forecasts of the opportunity with each purchaser, understanding of the purchaser needs, the products to best serve those needs, and the optimum program with publishers, and conference organizers he will have a winning strategy. The media and conferences strengthen the “pull” impact and should receive greater consideration as an alternative to the “push” strategy with sales leads. However, this applies mostly to high performance products

Valves at WEFTEC (4 pages)

Stand coverage is provided for suppliers of valves used in both air and liquid applications. There were 30 control valve exhibitors, 34 check valve exhibitors and equal numbers of gate and plug valve exhibitors. The valves used with aeration systems are being more closely evaluated due to the emphasis on reducing aeration energy requirement. A whole Decision System on aeration blower options includes considerations for lower pressure drop such as claimed with the Egger Iris control valve. Liquid applications start with the lift stations and companies such as DeZurik and extend through tertiary treatment and effluent reuse. The coverage includes a new butterfly valve design by Asahi/America.

Media and Valves (3 pages)

Thirteen magazines had pre-show issues and then distributed them from their stands. Struvite problems were selected as a way to show how the media was reporting valve solutions for a specific problem. Struvite is a major problem. Solutions include glass lined plug valves (Val-Matic) and motorized pinch valves (Onyx).

The magazines combine feature articles and product news releases as part of the valve coverage. The online coverage includes “sneak previews” that are supplied as email alerts. More of the feature articles are now available online. Systematic organization of this data provides a trove treasure of insights.

Determining Competitor Market Shares and Strategy (2 pages)

In addition to tracking the exhibition participation of competitors it is very valuable to track the advertising activity. Details on each advertisement in the current issue of a number of publications are shown.

Steel Industry Valve Purchases Will Exceed $1.7 billion this Year ( 2 pages)

A few steel companies purchase most of the valves used in this industry. Arcelor spends $80 million per year on valves. Four other manufacturers spend $40 million or more. Arcelor Mittal has centralized valve purchasing and makes decisions based on lowest total cost of ownership. They have 70,000 direct suppliers and have purchases of over $50 billion. So valves, parts, and service comprise 0.16% of total purchases.

The full October Valve Market update can be viewed at October Update

Details on the valve report are shown at N028 Industrial Valves: World Market