Monday September 29 8:05 AM EDT
Company Press Release
Frost and Sullivan - Making the Most Out of a Minimal
Situation: The Analytical Instrumentation Market Slims
Down
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., Sept. 29 /PRNewswire/ -- With increasingly limited resources, end
users in the analytical instrumentation market have had to make do with less. The massive budget
cuts that municipal utilities face are resulting in less funds available in areas such as labor and
equipment purchases.
According to recent strategic research by Frost & Sullivan, participants in the U.S. Water and
Wastewater Analytical Instrumentation Markets remain competitive by cutting costs and developing
instruments that allow end users to do more with less labor. Field and on-site wastewater analytical
instruments are used to measure or monitor the quality of water at both the municipal and industrial
water and wastewater plants.
Most industrial end users would probably not be monitoring if it weren't for the regulations. While
increasing cuts in EPA's enforcement budget limits its power, government regulations have been
extending their breadth of application: more and more industries and municipalities are finding
themselves required to monitor their actions. Since there has been a cut in labor costs to make up for
budget reductions, manufacturers are looking for the least expensive option that would guarantee
compliance and avoid fines. As a result, the segment to see most growth is the less expensive and
less labor intensive portable instrumentation market.
As technology improves, these pocket-sized instruments will replace the larger, more expensive
portable equipment in an increasing number of applications. Frost & Sullivan environmental analyst
William Stern said that as portable instruments become increasingly reliable, ''People will be buying
cheap pocket sized instruments to determine if they need to monitor in the first place.''
Field instruments have been improving technologically, and developments have been made in the
accuracy and stability of the results that they produce. The rapid results that are produced by on-site
testing provides an accurate picture of the current contents in a sample. Since end users often have
to measure many different parameters at once, multiparameter instruments are becoming more
reliable and increasingly popular as well.
The analytical instrumentation market is expected to grow at a steady rate, increasing from $229.4
million in 1996 to $315.3 million in 2003. Many public water and wastewater utilities are looking to
privatize, an impact that has yet to be determined. Privatized plants will be more willing to invest in
expensive instruments if there is a higher value that will cut labor costs or increase plant efficiency.
The technologies in the pH water and wastewater instrumentation research includes the continuous
pH, portable pH and the replacement pH. The oxidation-reduction potential (ORP) market includes
technologies for the continuous ORP, portable ORP and the replacement ORP. The dissolved
oxygen water and wastewater includes the continuous, portable and replacement sensors. The
conductivity water and wastewater market technologies include the continuous, portable, and
replacement sensors. The turbidity/suspended solids water and wastewater instrumentation market
includes the continuous turbidity, portable turbidity, and the suspended solids market. |
