Bitumen market valuation estimated at $93.38 Billion by end of 2020
A number of governments, particularly those in BRICS nations, are emphasizing on improving their highways or freeways in order to improve efficiency of the transportation industry.
As a result, heavy investments are being made to prepared roadways and as a result, the demand for bitumen is expanding. A recent business intelligence study developed at the headquarters of Transparency Market Research (TMR) has projected that the demand in the global bitumen market will be incrementing at a CAGR of 3.90% during the forecast period of 2014 to 2020. Revenue-wise, the analyst has estimated the market to attain a value of US$93.38 billion by the end of 2020.
Most Players Dominating in their Respective Regions
The analyst of the report has detected a fairly competitive scenario among the bitumen market leaders, notifying that some of the prominent players are Marathon Oil Company, NuStar Energy, ExxonMobil, Shell Bitumen, and Valero Energy Corporation. Most of the players are dominant in their respective regions. However, to gain greater shares, the vendors are consistently improvising their products to suite other applications, such as roofing and airport runways. Going forward, the tussle for leadership position is expected to intensify as a few promising new players make an entry.
Based on product type, the vendors of bitumen market are gaining most prominent chunk of demand for paving grade bitumen. The analyst has evaluated that there was a demand for 80,000 kilo tons of paving grade bitumen in 2016, constituting for the most significant chunk of the overall market that had a demand for 129,673.2 kilo tons of bitumen. However, increasing preference of concrete is curtailing the progress of this segment.
Application-wise, roadways continues to be most important segment, promising to consume more than 80% of the total demand by the end of 2020. Geographically, Asia Pacific has been highlighted as the region with enormous potential, although North America provided for a greater demand for bitumen as of 2016.
Demand for Polymer Modified Bitumen Opening New Opportunities
Apart from increased road development activities across emerging economies, the bitumen market is gaining traction from growing scope and applications of polymer modified bitumen (PMB). PMB is gaining adoption for its advantageous properties of high skid resistance, high porosity, and low noise.
The roadways industry highly appreciates these advantages and hence a growing demand for the same. On the other hand, environmental concerns pertaining to the extraction of bitumen and emergence of some of the viable alternatives are expected to curtail the progress of the bitumen market in the near future. Nevertheless, the analyst of the report has foreseen the development of bio-based bitumen to open vast new opportunities.
The trend across all industries is to be eco-friendly and the bitumen market players will also have to devise ways to sustain their industry in an environment-friendly manner.
