by Zhao Xinhua
In recent years, filtration nonwovens have been widely used in industrial filtration, protection, medical and other fields. The demand for nonwovens in the application field of filtration materials will increase by 2.7 percent annually by 2024, according to the latest forecast issued by the international industrial research organization Freedonia Group.
The growth is mainly driven by four factors. The first is the continuous development of advanced nanofiber technology. Advanced nanofiber technology makes nonwovens more competitive with alternative materials such as membranes; second, the manufacturing industry is increasingly using nonwovens in gas and liquid filtration devices; third, the governments of various countries have increased continuous supervision of air and water quality, requiring the filtration of flowing air and wastewater in manufacturing applications to increase product application space; fourth, consumers are paying more attention to the quality of indoor air and drinking water, increasing their new expenditure on filtering products.
From a regional perspective, due to the highly industrialized economy and long-term emphasis on environmental protection in developed countries and regions such as North America and Europe, they will continue to maintain their leading position in the main market for filtration nonwovens, and focus on technology upgrades to develop more efficient filtration material. However, due to the high degree of market saturation, the growth rate of filtration nonwovens in developed countries and regions will slow down.
Compared with North America and other economically developed regions, the fast-growing industries and economies of in Asia-Pacific countries, as well as increasing environmental problems, are making them the main market for the global filtration industry in the next few years. The main drivers of growth come from countries such as China and India.
China is the most important filtration material market in the Asia-Pacific region. In the past few years, Chinas filtration nonwovens industry has made considerable progress, and product quality has also been greatly improved. The downstream domestic demand market has provided the main driving force for the continuous growth of Chinas filtration material market. For example, the governments continuous increase in the supervision of automobile carbon emissions, and the continuous growth of the automobile after-sales maintenance market, have further expanded the market scale of filtration nonwovens in the transportation field.
The continuous industrialization activities organized by the Indian government also promote the development of filtration materials. Benefits from the strong development of the automobile industry, the market size of filtration nonwovens in the transportation sector in India is expected to double. In addition, developing countries in the Middle East and Africa, such as Saudi Arabia, increases in demand for filtration nonwovens driven by petroleum processing, while the South Africa region, the rapid growth of filtration nonwovens is due to the improvement of industrialization and the growth of end market demand.