A new report by the Freedonia Group, entitled World Industrial Gases, has been criticised as misleading by leading industrial gas consultancy – Spiritus Consulting. According to the new report, the industrial gases business is forecast to increase by 6.9% p.a. through to 2011 to reach $36.8bn.
However, according to Spiritus, the industrial gases market in 2007 reached an estimated $58bn – well above that stated in the Freedonia report. “It is rare that I comment on other consultancies reports but I have made an exception on this as I believe the report is far from accurate” states John Raquet, Managing Director of Spiritus. “While I have not read the report in full, the press release clearly indicates the findings of the report and you only have to add the gas turnover of the 6 leading quoted gas companies to see that the figures appear to be rather misleading”.
Our current forecast, which was based on a 2006 base year figure of $54bn shows that we expect the gases business to grow at over 8% per annum over the next 5 years to reach $80bn by 2011 – double that quoted by Freedonia.
The two largest regional markets are those of North America and Western Europe which account for over 60% of the worldwide gases business. While the Asia/Pacific region is growing fast and also contains the second largest market for gases – Japan – Spiritus states that the region only accounts for 25% of the total demand for gases and services.
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