LONDON – A new report by market intelligence firm Interact Analysis predicts strong growth for the motion controls market over the next four years, driven by demand from robotics, material handling equipment (including warehouse automation and intralogistics), food & beverage machinery, and packaging machinery. The firm says the market will exceed $15 billion by 2023, despite a decline in the market (-3.8%) in 2019.

Within those applications, the sectors are forecast to generate almost 30% of revenues in 2023, compared with just under 25% in 2018. The firm said the strong growth is expected despite “the torrid time” that machine tool vendors are facing, which generated more than a third of motion control revenues in 2018.

The “Motion Controls Report – 2019” from Interact Analysis includes coverage of rotary servo motors, linear and torque motors; servo drives, and associated position control hardware. Tim Dawson, a research director for Interact Analysis and principal analyst of the report, said the future is strong for the market despite some of the declines.

“Although the motion control market may be considered fairly mature, there are important trends impacting its future growth helping drive revenues at an above average rate for the long-term,” said Dawson. “Couple that with product releases from new vendors, plus expanding portfolios from existing ones; and the fundamentals for this industry appear very strong, even despite headwinds in certain key sectors.”

In the robotics space, Dawson said issues related to labor availability and costs have been a general problem for the global manufacturing industry, and this will remain one of the key drivers for growth in the industrial robot market. The trend of automating to reduce costs and improve productivity in manufacturing will have a positive pull-through effect on the market for industrial robots, as well as the motion control products used within them, he said.

In the materials handling sector, especially the use of motion controls in warehouse automation and intralogistics applications for the precise movement of goods, the growth is having a net effect not only on motion controls, but also for low-voltage motor drives that are used in simpler conveying applications.

An additional factor that helps strengthen the outlook for motion control demand is the trend around decentralization, the firm said. Higher-protection ratings are helping advance the market for particular motion products, the report elaborated. “Although even combined the opportunity is small compared to the total (representing only 2.4% of the global market in 2018), the findings show that revenues for both products are projected to experience higher growth than the rest of the market, driving their combined value to exceed $500 million in 2023.”

Interact Analysis said that six regions in the world – China, the U.S., Japan, Germany, Italy, and South Korea – will continue to dominate market revenues in the motion control space. The firm said China is expected to add “significant revenues over the next four years,” making it almost twice as large as the U.S. market. While sectors that utilize metal cutting tools remain the largest in terms of revenue, the strongest overall growth during the forecast period will come from mobile robots and industrial robots, which are the only areas experiencing growth in 2019 when compared to 2018, the firm said.

More information on the report is available through the Interact Analysis website.