Despite the ongoing impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, the global industrial laser machine market showed strong growth last year, according to a new report from market research firm Optech Consulting.
Based on preliminary data for the first three quarters of 2021, the global industrial laser machines market reached a record high of $21.3 billion, up 22% from 2020. It is quite eye-catching that the industrial laser source market has also set a new record of 5.2 billion US dollars in the past year.
According to Arnold Mayer, general manager of Optech Consultin, this growth is mainly driven by the main end industries of laser material processing, including microelectronics, automotive and general sheet metal processing. “Demand for laser processing has even picked up, as Covid-19 has increased sales of electronic equipment. The transition to electric vehicles has stimulated demand in the automotive industry, which mainly includes high-power welding and foil cutting. In addition, sheet metal Cutting demand in 2021 is strong. Even though the application has been around for decades, the technology continues to grow.”
Fiber laser continue to deliver higher and wider power at lower cost, opening up many new market opportunities in sheet metal processing. “Traditionally, sheet metal was cut in large batches by stamping presses; for small batch processing, laser cutting machine has been used more and more. However, this is changing as laser cutting increases power and yield, and become very efficient.”
As a result, laser cutting machine can compete with punch presses machine now and take a larger share of the market for processing mid-volume volumes, Mayer said. He said it was an ongoing process. “There is still a lot of potential for laser cutting sheet metal. The same is true for thick sheet metal, where laser cutting machine and plasma cutting machine are competitors.”
China will continue to be the largest market
Regionally, China plays a major role in stimulating the growth of the laser systems market, contributing a high share in the global industrial manufacturing industry.
Arnold Mayer said: “The degree of adoption of laser technology is now comparable to that of Europe and the United States, which means that China is by far the largest market for industrial laser systems.” He analyzed that this is mainly driven by sheet metal cutting and microelectronics manufacturing. The sheet metal cutting business in the region has grown significantly in recent years, and much of the microelectronics manufacturing business is now located precisely in the Chinese market.
Laser have become a key technology in the production of many microelectronics products such as semiconductors, displays, and printed circuit boards. “Many Western consumer electronics companies manufacture products in China, and more and more local Chinese companies also manufacture products in China.” “So this opens up a lot of opportunities for certain laser applications, such as using short pulses and ultra-short pulses. Pulsed (USP) laser for microprocessing.”
Future growth areas and market forecasts
Arnold Mayer said that new laser processing applications could be a breakthrough point for this market in the future. “The two main end industries for industrial lasers are the electronics and automotive industries. In the past, new developments in these areas were critical for new laser applications such as e-mobility, handheld electronics and their components. These trends will continue, For example, new breakthroughs in displays continue to emerge and are expected to continue to bring new laser applications.
Another direction worth thinking about is what types of lasers need to be put into new applications. Often, several types of lasers compete with each other, and ultimately laser selection is based on the application, so suppliers need a product portfolio to serve these new applications.
Arnold Mayer said that the laser machine market has grown at an average annual rate of 9 percent over the past 15 years, and this growth trend has not shown saturation.
It is expected that this market will continue to maintain a high single-digit growth rate in the next five years, and there is great application potential in the major end industries mentioned above (such as automotive, electronics and sheet metal manufacturing). In addition, megatrends in industrial manufacturing and other related industries will have an impact.
If this growth is sustained in the high single digits, the amount of laser machine market will reach more than $30 billion in five years, equivalent to more than 30% of the current machine tool market.
At the same time, he cautioned against the forecast: “Demand for industrial laser machine has historically been very vulnerable to macroeconomic fluctuations, just like demand for machine tools or semiconductor equipment. For example, in 2009, demand for industrial laser machine was Demand has dropped by more than 40% and it took several years for the market to return to long-term growth. Fortunately, there has not been a similar recession in more than 10 years, although we cannot rule out that in the future.”
Post time: Jun-08-2022