During the week of September 19, 2011, I had the great pleasure of visiting Beijing, China and attending the Chinese Industrial Gases Industry Association’s (CIGIA) 13th China International Exhibition on Gases Technology, Equipment, and Applications. I also had the privilege of participating in and presenting a short picture of the US industrial gas business to the gathering of the 2011 International Cylinder Manufacturers Congress (ICMC 2011) held concurrently with NG & IG, CHINA 2011.
CIGIA’s member companies include many of China’s design/builders of gas plants and ASU’s, storage/delivery equipment, applications systems, and the country’s gas producers and distributors. It is a very large group of companies which must move fast and aggressively to keep up with China’s gas markets and its service opportunities. China has a population of almost 1.4 billion with a per capita income of only $4,500/year, and an economy growing at about 10 percent per year. China currently produces over 650 million tons per year of raw steel compared with the US’s 90 million tons—so one can imagine the welding and cutting gases and materials used there. In economic (US$) terms, China’s industrial gas business is about one third that of the US, partly because of what appeared in conversation to be lower gas and service prices than in the US, Europe, and Japan. With some people talking about growth rates of 30 to 50 percent per year, one has difficulty imagining the size of China’s industrial gas industry in 15 to 20 years.
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