Market Challenges: Stringent government regulations

Stringent government regulations are imposing major restraints on the growth of global pressure vessels market. Pressure vessels are critical equipment used across many industries like oil and gas, chemicals, power generation etc where safety is of paramount importance. Government regulations play a vital role in ensuring the safety standards are met through stringent design, material and operational guidelines. However, over the past few years many countries have further tightened the regulatory norms to avoid any catastrophic failures. For example, in European Union, the Pressure Equipment Directive 97/23/EC was amended in 2014 with more rigorous technical requirements for design, manufacture, testing and conformity assessment procedures. Similar revisions have been done in international standards like ASME and ISO as well. This has increased compliance burden on equipment manufacturers. The approval and certification process has become lengthier and complex which is delaying the time to market for new products.

Market Opportunities: Emerging economies focusing on green energy sources

Emerging economies worldwide are increasingly focusing on developing green and renewable energy sources to power their future economic growth in a sustainable manner. This shift towards clean energy presents a massive opportunity for growth in the global pressure vessels market. As developing nations across Asia, Africa and Latin America undertake large scale projects in solar, wind, hydro and other renewable energy generation, there will be a huge demand for pressure vessels to support these green initiatives. All green energy systems such as solar thermal plants, geothermal installations, biomass gasifiers require extensive networks of pressure vessels to function efficiently and move energy across grids. For example, a concentrated solar plant may need thousands of pressure vessels to store thermal energy in its heat transfer fluids. Similarly, biogas projects involve multiple pressure rated vessels for various stages of anaerobic digestion of biomass and storage of processed fuel.