IMS Research is publishing a new report that forecasts revenues from PLCs sold to machine builders in China will steadily increase to over USD1026million by 2011, at a CAGR of 16.2 per cent. The materials handling equipment sector is projected to register even stronger growth, with a CAGR of some 21.9 per cent.
Market research analyst and report author, Jackey Wang, comments: "Currently shipments of PLCs to this sector are much smaller than shipments to the textile machinery, packaging and printing machinery sectors, and were estimated to be worth USD19.8million in China in 2006, or 4.1 per cent of the total PLC market to machine builders. However, strong growth is predicted for the materials handling sector over the next five years of between 17 and 28 per cent per year. The production of material handling equipment such as cranes, electronic hoists, conveyors, elevators and escalators has grown very fast in the past three years and this is forecast to continue. Currently China is a global production base for many consumer and electronic products, which is driving the development of the logistics industry and thus domestic demand for this equipment.
"As automation levels are enhanced, more and more PLCs will be installed on or integrated within this equipment. The adoption of PLCs will help to improve the accuracy and efficiency of the material handling equipment and reduce the labour costs of the equipment users. Besides the efficiency improvement, the average cost of PLCs is forecast to keep falling, which helps machine builders make their equipment more competitive at relatively low additional cost by adopting small, compact PLCs."
