Industrial capital expenditure in the Americas to exceed $1 trillion by 2015

Investment continues to recover following the economic downturn, during which many projects were either postponed or cancelled altogether, with industrial capital expenditure forecast to grow by 6.8% from 2011 to 2012.

Source: IMS Research (acquired by IHS)

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A new report published by IMS Research shows that industrial capital expenditure in the Americas will exceed the $1 trillion mark by 2015, boosted by strong growth from all 15 the end-user sectors examined.

According to the study, investment continues to recover following the economic downturn, during which many projects were either postponed or cancelled altogether, with industrial capital expenditure forecast to grow by 6.8% from 2011 to 2012. As well as looking to increase capacity in order to keep up with rising demand from recovering economies, there are a number of other factors contributing to the growth in capital expenditure: meeting ever-changing regulatory challenges, increasing efficiency, improving safety and new product development are all supporting continued investment.

Meanwhile, the industry to see the most capital expenditure in the Americas will continue to be oil and gas, representing over one third of the region’s total. 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. This is followed by Canada and then Brazil; however, the expected growth of Brazil is such, that it will have surpassed Canada by 2016.

The report, entitled Capital Expenditure in Factory and Process Automation, examines total industrial capital expenditure as well as breaking out the automation spend in fifteen  industry sectors to evaluate the opportunities this presents for automation vendors.