IVS Valve Industry Think Tank: Challenges Highlighted for Valve Manufacturers

More specialisation, added value and local content.

The fifth edition of "IVS Valve Industry Think Tank" was held in Bergamo, Italy, featuring the most important players in the industrial valve supply chain. The event was promoted by IVS - Industrial Valve Summit, the most important international event dedicated to reference technologies and flow control solutions and organised by Confindustria Bergamo and Promoberg. The fifth edition of the event will take place at the Bergamo Exhibition Centre on May 15^th and 16^th, 2024. The IVS Think Tank was organised in cooperation with VALVEcampus, the association that gathers Italian industrial valve manufacturers. 

The event analysed corporate innovation and sustainability issues, delving into the strategic perspectives of the energy sector, which is currently experiencing a phase of profound transformation. During the conference, the results of the Market Perspectives report on the Oil & Gas Industrial Valve Industry, carried out by Roland Berger, were presented. 

The report showed that in the traditional energy sectors, the industrial valve industry enjoys a very positive outlook in the short to medium term, supported by solid demand. New projects that further extend the geographical reach of local companies, starting in the Americas, then in the Middle East and Asia, will lead the development. In the two-year period 2023-2024, investment in new plants is expected to grow by an average of 16% over 2022 (USD 183 billion per year versus USD 158 billion), the year in which the global situation stabilised after the rebound in 2021 from the great contraction recorded in 2020. Despite the positive projections, investments in 2023 will stay below those of the pre-pandemic period (in 2019, USD 200 billion). 

As for alternative energy sectors, growth in hydrogen and CCUS (carbon capture use and storage) is largely expected after 2030, with the largest share of investments in the Americas, Europe, and Asia. Demand in nuclear power is also solid, both in the short and long term. 

In the long term, Oil & Gas is expected to experience an increasing overcapacity of components compared to the market demand. The price pressure is also expected to increase at the same time. The growth sectors (in particular, those related to renewables) will only partly compensate for the contraction of the more traditional segments. For companies in the sector, it will be essential to introduce a series of strategies focusing on three pillars: more specialisation, product, and market; more added value, moving from the production of components alone to entire solutions and systems; and more presence worldwide with offices and labs (local content). Objectives to be achieved through company size growth and aggregation, opening the market to new segments, products and services. A recipe that would enable European operators to withstand the growing pressure of global and, especially, Asian players. 

Find out more: https://industrialvalvesummit.com/

Published: 4th December 2023