Flow Research
27 Water Street
Wakefield, MA 01880
(781) 245-3200
(781) 224-7552 (fax)
Contacts: Jesse Yoder, Flow Research: (781) 245-3200 (jesse@flowresearch.com)
Nick Limb, Ducker Worldwide: (248) 644-0086; (nickl@ducker.com)
For immediate release
New Worldwide Flowmeter Study Finds Major Shift Towards New Technology Flowmeters
Wakefield, Massachusetts, November 8, 2001— A major shift is occurring in the flowmeter market, according to a new market study from Flow Research and Ducker Worldwide (Bloomfield Hills, Michigan). Users are moving away from traditional technologies towards New Technology flowmeters. The study, entitled The World Market for New Technology Flowmeters, predicts strong growth for New Technology flowmeters over the next several years. Revenues from New Technology flowmeters are projected to increase at an average annual rate of 8.8 percent through 2005.
New Technology flowmeters include Coriolis, magnetic, ultrasonic, vortex, and multivariable differential pressure (DP) meters. They have four features in common. First, they have been introduced in the last fifty years. Second, they incorporate technological advances that avoid some of the problems inherent in earlier flowmeters. Third, they are more the focus of new product development efforts by the major flowmeter suppliers than Traditional Technology meters. Fourth, their performance, including criteria such as accuracy, is better than that of Traditional Technology meters. Traditional Technology flowmeters include single-variable DP, open channel, positive displacement, thermal, turbine, and variable area meters.
The shift towards New Technology flowmeters is occurring for a number of reasons. First, users today are looking for high accuracy. Most New Technology flowmeters provide accuracies from 0.1 percent to 1.0 percent. Accuracy and reliability are the top two criteria that customers use when selecting flowmeters. Customers are looking for accuracy in custody transfer applications, to avoid unnecessary loss of fluids, and to make more precise measurements when measuring fluids for manufacturing purposes. New Technology flowmeters provide the highest accuracy available in flow measurement, and this is one of the main reasons users are making the change to New Technology meters.
Second, users today are looking for reliability. They prefer to “set it and forget it.” Users are demanding flowmeters they can install without having to worry about whether they still measuring correctly, or whether they will fail to operate at all. Many Traditional Technology flowmeters have moving parts, which are subject to wear. This is especially true of turbine and positive displacement flowmeters. Orifice plates are also subject to wear, and they cause substantial pressure drop. While turbine and positive displacement flowmeters can provide high accuracies, the fact that they have moving parts reduces their reliability in the long term.
Third, New Technology flowmeters offer more features, including self-diagnostic capabilities. New Technology flowmeters have been the focus of product development by many major flowmeter suppliers over the past ten years. As a result, many of the new product releases in flowmeters have been focused on New Technology meters. New Technology meters offer many advanced features that may not be available in Traditional technology flowmeters. These include advanced software capabilities, more application-specific packages, and highly durable materials of construction. Self-diagnostics, including the capability of projecting maintenance requirements, is an important feature of many New Technology flowmeters.
The World Market for New Technology Flowmeters is the fifth in a series of studies on the worldwide flowmeter market. This series of studies is called Worldflow™. The data in this study was compiled by first analyzing the Coriolis (Volume I), magnetic (Volume II), ultrasonic (Volume III), and vortex (Volume IV) flowmeter markets separately. The World Market for New Technology Flowmeters includes data from these earlier volumes, as well as data on single-variable and multivariable DP flowmeters.
The Worldflow™ studies are being produced as the result of a partnership between Flow Research and Ducker Worldwide. As part of the Worldflow™ series of studies, the two companies surveyed 300 flowmeter users in North America, Europe, and Asia. This survey has been published as Volume VI in the Worldflow™ series. The results of the user survey were factored into the forecasts for Volumes I to V of the studies.
Flow Research is a subsidiary of Idea Network (www.ideanetwork.net). Idea Network was founded in 1986 to provide technical and market research on process control, including variables such as flow, temperature, pressure, and level. In addition to market research, Idea Network has constructed a flowlab to explore new ways to measure flow and to test existing meters. Ducker Worldwide has 36 years experience researching industrial and business markets, and has offices throughout the world. Flow Research and Ducker Worldwide have formed a business alliance to produce a series of market research studies focusing on temperature and flow.
Total Worldwide Shipments of New Technology Flowmeters
(Millions of Dollars)
- 30 -