North American region, the largest gases market in the world, was impacted last year by hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Despite the negative impact, the outlook for the region remains bright over the next five years as the industry benefi ts from increased homecare services and form higher hydrogen demand.
The traditional industrial gases business in the US is a relatively mature market and has shown signs over the past 10 years of slowing down in terms of growth.
At $16.2bn, the North American gases business accounts for 32 per cent of the global gases business “ approximately equal to that of Western and Eastern
European regions combined. Praxair, Air Products and Airgas (currently ranked 2nd, 4th and 7th of the seven largest gas companies by revenue) are all headquartered in the USA and between them account for 52 per cent of the North American market with Air Liquide, Linde, BOC and Matheson-Trigas accounting for a further 28 per cent. The remaining 20 per cent is supplied by independent ˜Tier 2 distributors and smaller localised distributors.
Whilst the total gases business is dominated by the major companies the same cannot be said for the packaged gas business worth an estimated $6.5bn in
2005. Whereas for the bulk business the majors have 80 per cent of the market, in packaged gases they only have 60 per cent with Praxair being the largest
with 17 per cent and Airgas with 15 per cent. Unlike the more structured European market, independent companies have approximately 40 per cent of the total US packaged gas business and there are more than 800 companies in this sector, many of whom were established at the end of the second world war by GIs
returning from action.
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