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American Industrial Capital Expenditure Pushes $1 Trillion

ControlDesign.com
11/16/2012

Industrial capital expenditure in the Americas is expected to exceed the $1 trillion mark by 2015, boosted by strong growth from all 15 of the end-user sectors examined recently by IMS Research.

According to the study, investment continues to recover following the economic downturn, during which many projects were either postponed or cancelled altogether. Industrial capital expenditure is forecast to show growth of 6.8% between 2011 and 2012.

In addition to increasing capacity to keep up with rising demand from recovering economies, there are a number of other factors contributing to the growth in capital expenditure, according to Andrew Robertson, analyst–capital expenditure for IMS Research. Meeting ever-changing regulatory challenges, increasing efficiency, improving safety and new product development are all supporting continued investment, he noted.
 
The industry to see the most capital expenditure in the Americas will continue to be oil and gas, representing more than a third of the region’s total dollars spent. The sector is benefiting from improvements in technology and a high oil price, which have meant that unconventional deposits, such as sand and shale oil, can now be extracted and processed profitably. With vast amounts of these now-exploitable deposits around the world, and notably in North America, this is helping to fuel continued investment in the oil and gas sector.
 
The U.S. is comfortably the leading nation, and is set to remain so, Robertson said. This is followed by Canada and then Brazil; however, Brazil is expected to have surpassed Canada by 2016.

The report, “Capital Expenditure in Factory and Process Automation,” examines total industrial capital expenditure, and also breaks out the automation spend in 15 industry sectors to evaluate the opportunities this presents for automation vendors.