Statistics

Statistics

Industrial valves sector suffers decline

While the industrial valves sector was still able to hold its own in the first half of 2020 despite the corona crisis, declining demand is currently making itself felt more strongly at home and abroad.

Foreign business, in particular, is clearly declining. Foreign sales fell by 5 per cent in the period January to September 2020. By contrast, sales in Germany rose by 10 per cent at the same time. Overall, the manufacturers thus achieved a sales increase of 1 per cent.

“Thanks to a very good start to the year and a stable domestic market, German manufacturers of industrial valves have so far come through the crisis well,” comments Axel Weidner, Chairman of VDMA Armaturen, the German Valve Manufacturers Association, on the current situation.

However, there are some indications that this will not remain so in the coming months. Many companies are using the time to get fit in terms of digitalisation.

“Remote selling is the order of the day. The aim is to continue to differentiate ourselves from our international competitors with high-quality services and products Made in Germany,” emphasises Weidner.  Thanks to stable domestic demand, the industry achieved an increase in sales in all segments from January to September.

 However, the situation was different for foreign sales, which declined across the board. Due to a sharp drop in foreign business, sales of shut-off valves shrank by 2 per cent overall. In contrast, sales of control, safety and monitoring valves still increased by 4 per cent.  A glance at the order books shows that the negative trend of recent months will continue in the near future.

 In the period from January to September 2020, German industrial valve manufacturers exported goods worth around 3 billion euros abroad. This represents a decline of 10.5 per cent compared to the same period last year.

 Business with the country’s most important trading partner, China, picked up again somewhat after a sharp dip at the beginning of the year and is currently only just (minus 1.4 per cent) below the very good level of the previous year.

In total, fittings worth 401.4 million euros ($476.4 million) were delivered to the People’s Republic. Deliveries to the second most important customer country, the US, slumped by 18.1 per cent to 269.0 million euros.

 Among the key customer countries, only Switzerland and Russia stood out positively. Exports to the southern neighboring country rose by 5.3 per cent to 113.1 million euros, and 4.3 per cent more goods (107 million euros) were delivered to Russia.

 

Global telco cloud revenue to grow to $29.3bn

Global telco cloud revenue will grow to $29.3 billion by 2025, up from $8.7 billion in 2020, at a 5-year Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 27 per cent.

The telco cloud growth will be driven primarily by cloud infrastructure-related investments, such as Virtual Network Functions (VNFs), Management and Network Orchestration (Mano), and Cloud Native Functions (CNFs).

By 2025, the telco cloud market will be worth $10 billion in North America, $9 billion in Asia-Pacific (APAC), and $8.2 billion in Europe, forecasts global tech market advisory firm, ABI Research in its new whitepaper, The 36 Transformative Technology Stats You Need to Know for 2021.

This introduction of cloudified environments in the telco business landscape also presents some shifts in the value chain. For example, telcos are now being presented a second option of telco cloud deployment – the multi-vendor approach, in which different network equipment vendors are responsible for different components of the telco.

 “While this approach seems to provide some benefits, such as avoiding single-vendor lock in, it also requires substantial coordination of effort, not only through robust Mano, but also between stakeholders during certain key phases of the telco cloud deployment, such as the design and planning phase,” explains Kangrui Ling, 5G Core and Edge Networks Research Analyst at ABI Research.

Another 5G Core and Edge Networks trend highlighted in the whitepaper: 5G network slicing stands to create approximately $8.9 billion by 2026 at a CAGR of 76 per cent. “Arguably that is a drop in the bucket for Communication Service Provider (CSP) service revenue. CSPs continue to possess strong network assets, namely low-latency, last-mile access and core network capabilities,” Don Alusha, Senior Analyst at ABI Research points out.

 

Air cargo bounces back from steep fall in April

Worldwide air cargo has bounced back steadily from a steep fall in April, resulting in an October-performance of ‘only’ 11 per cent below October 2019, but 8 per cent above September 2020.

 Air cargo had contracted by 1/3 year-over-year (YoY) in April 2020 says WorldACD Market Data. Since that very steep decline, the sector Airline revenues from air cargo kept rising: +48 per cent YoY, thanks to a still very high price per/kg, which has hovered between 60 per cent and 67 per cent above last year for the past 4 months, culminating in an October increase of 66 per cent YoY and 4.3 per cent MoM.

 All this happened with freighter capacity increasing by 5 per cent MoM, whilst cargo capacity on passenger aircraft grew by 11 per cent MoM. The load factors for the two aircraft types increased by a modest 2 per cent respectively 1 per cent over the month of September.

 At the risk of sounding like a broken record, we report that – among the three ‘largest regions – the origin Asia Pacific did best again in volume in October, falling 7 per cent YoY, but recording the one-but-highest YoY increase of price/kg (+82.4 per cent). The origin area Middle East & South Asia (MESA) almost doubled its prices for the month of October YoY.

 The MoM price increase ex-Asia Pacific was 9.4 per cent against a worldwide average of 4 per cent: in 2019 the MoM increase ex-Asia Pacific was 5.5 per cent. For the first 10 months of the year, Asia Pacific was the only region keeping its YoY volume loss in single figures (-9.8 per cent), coupled with a record YoY revenue increase of 59 per cent, more than double the worldwide average of 29 per cent.

 Most striking is the fact that the share in worldwide air cargo revenues, generated from business originating in the Asia Pacific countries, has gone up from 41 per cent in 2019 to 50 per cent in 2020.  China receives the bulk of the attention of air cargo pundits these days. Understandably so: the country is twhriving in terms of air cargo price increases, as evidenced by a MoM growth in price/kg of 15.2 per cent (in 2019 the MoM change was 10 per cent). From China to Europe the MoM increase was even higher: 18.7 pwer cent (14.8 per cent last year).   Air cargo from China to North America attracted a price/kg of $5.11, whilst to Europe the average was $4.33.  

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