Industrial Fans: Economic Environment

During the early part of the first decade of the 21st century, the fan industry was in its boom years. The economies of developing world were expanding, which in turn created demand for natural resources to fuel their growing infrastructures along with their domestic consumer industries. Most natural resources require processing before delivering to their final market. This processing often uses industrial fans to contain dust, remove harmful pollutants, and assist in the process of the natural resources. Some of the many applications for industrial fans in the natural resources include copper smelting, dust extraction from copper pulverizing, nickel refining, steel mill blast furnace emissions control.

Another area experiencing a boom in demand for industrial fans was the cement industry. In the process of converting lime(calcium carbonate) to calcium oxide, it must be heated. The kiln ID fan draws superheated gas through the kiln and then through a cyclone separator and/or electro-static precipitator. With the boom in global infrastructure development, cement manufacturers were expanding to meet the demand.

The last two years, we have experienced a cooling off in the world wide economic growth triggered by the sub-prime financial crisis. This has resulting on a sharp drop in infrastructure spending resulting in a drop in demand for natural resources.

Fortunately, the economies of the non-western world, which account for the majority of demand for natural resources, did not experiences as sharp a recession as the western countries. This means that demand for natural resources is already starting to pick up again. This can be seen by the Nickel price:
Nickel reached a peak in 2007, and went to a 5 year low in 2009, but now the prices are on the re-bound. This trend is also occurring in many other natural resource prices.

This means that demand for industrial fans should begin to improve in the next 1 to 2 years. During this time of lower demand, fan manufacturers should make use of this time to optimize the management and methods for engineering and manufacturing fans, along with put effort into establishing their market presence. This will enable them to capitalize on the upcoming boom in the fan industry.