A report conducted by market research company Technavio has predicted the global materials handling equipment market will grow at an annual rate of around 6 percent over the next four years to 2020.
The report, which is a broad-based study of the materials handling equipment market as a whole, found that the market is highly competitive and is dominated by eight major equipment manufacturers: German firms Beumer and SSI Schaefer; US firms Clark Material Handling, Crown Equipment and Columbus McKinnon; Luxembourg’s Dematic; Japan’s Daifuku; and Dutch baggage handling firm Vanderlande.
Many smaller vendors fill in any gaps.
The report looked at the types of materials handling equipment being produced for various industries and found a marked increase in automated technologies.
The retail, automotive and pharmaceutical industries have been the largest adopters of automated storage systems and electric trucks and forklifts.
The report predicts a large surge in demand for forklifts, hand-pallet trucks, industrial trucks and bucket elevators in emerging markets due to the availability of inexpensive manual labour.
Technavio also looked at the market by geographic region, dividing the world into Europe, North America, Asia-Pacific (APAC) and the rest of the world (ROW).
The figures showed that the APAC region is growing at the fastest rate and will occupy more than 43 percent of the overall market by 2020.
Much of the region’s growth can be attributed to the rapid industrialisation and development in countries like China and India. The APAC region’s growth is predicted to be 7 percent annually during this period, outpacing the market as a whole.