There’s a lot to do for tube and pipe manufacturers

Among the various uses of tubes and pipes there's the conveyance of water and liquids, something that makes them the arteries of industrialised countries. Tubes and pipes provide companies and private households with water and ensure disposal of their wastewater. If they are missing or defective, this has rather a disruptive effect on the economic cycle. Governments and enterprises therefore need to invest extremely large sums of money in repairing, renovating and replacing such pipes. There’s a lot to do for pipe manufacturers – everywhere, throughout the world.

A rusty pipe network in St Petersburg
In St Petersburg for example the supply situation is critical both for drinking water and for wastewater disposal. According to the foreign trade and marketing company Germany Trade and Invest (GTI), tap water in St Petersburg is substandard because 40 per cent of the city’s 6,755-kilometre pipe network has been “worn to a frazzle”. In Western European cities, by contrast, the level of wear and tear averages is only 12 per cent. “St Petersburg is therefore doing everything it can to remedy this defect and modernise its network, so that it can eventually reach the same level as Munich or Berlin,” says GTI. The city is planning to spend nearly EUR 2.3 billion on its water supply by 2025. The situation is equally tricky in wastewater disposal: “Not all the wastewater that is produced in this metropolis is actually cleaned. Dirty water still gets into the waterways,” says GTI. Moreover, most of the pipes are made of cast iron and rust at a terrific speed. It’s an unfortunate situation that needs to be stopped. From 2025 all wastewater that enters the natural water cycle must have been cleaned first. St Petersburg is therefore replacing 900 kilometres of its sewage system, building new wastewater treatment plants and planning to install a completely new wastewater purification system. The costs, according to GTI, will be approx. EUR 3 billion between now and 2025. So, in order to create a state-of-the-art sewage system, there will be a demand for pipe specialists. New wastewater systems for China’s industry
China needs to adjust itself to increasing industrialisation and urbanisation. The country has an immense deficit in industrial and public wastewater treatment systems, so that “polluted industrial wastewater keeps getting into the groundwater without being filtered,” says Germany Trade and Invest.
During the last few years around EUR 55 billion has flown into China’s water industry, and, according to GTI, another EUR 37 billion will follow soon. The money will be channelled, among other things, into completing the South-North Water Transfer Project, a system of canals to take water from southern to northern China. Nearly US$ 80 billion, incidentally, has so far been invested in this project. United States: pipes in a poor state
Expensive replacements will also be required in the United States over the next years. By 2020 nearly 42 per cent of all pipes will be in a poor or very poor state. A large proportion of US pipes date back to the 1940s, 50s and 60s.
The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) believes that the replacement of old and unusable pipes alone would require more than US$ 1,000 billion in investments. Of this total, around US$ 298 billion would be required for the replacement of wastewater and rainwater systems over the next 20 years. The largest proportion – 80 per cent – will need to be spent on pipe replacements.
Additional pipes will be needed in the booming shale gas industry, and shale gas extraction will require technologies for water recycling and reuse. It will mean installing pipes that are resistant to chemicals – a need which presents good opportunities for pipe manufacturers and suppliers to support the current radical transformation of the US water sector. Read more about the situation in Germany and other EU contries in this interesting article, that shows that the demand for pipes is as strong as ever >>>