Yole Développement has released a new report titled ‘Flow Chemistry Technologies - Microtechnologies for Chemical Process Intensification.’
According to the report, supply chain of the market for microreaction technologies has begun to get structured over the past five years. The range of products offered in the market has increased in terms of price and performance, and from systems to modules. Moreover, strategic partnerships have been established and market consolidation has taken place.
The strongly growing MRT market can now be divided to three sub-segments: R&D systems, MRT modules, and production units. Benjamin Roussel, Yole Développement’s Technology & Market Analyst for Medical Technologies, stated that there is a strong market shift from modules to systems. While the market for single modules fell down drastically, the volume of modules integrated in production and R&D systems developed at 18% CAGR between 2007 and 2012, and the R&D system market demonstrated an imposing 25% annual growth rate.
The benefits of MRT technologies such as cost, safer process, better selectivity and speed optimization have significantly increased the interest of prospective users. Roussel informed that major pharmaceutical and chemical companies believe that MRT is capable of solving some of their existing processing issues for laboratory research and debottleneck production. Potential applications of MRT according to Yole Développement are MRT for reactive species, MRT for scalability and MRT for library synthesis. However, on the technical part, user needs will be different when the main objective is to accurately control the reaction kinetics, design new processes or prevent adverse conditions.
The market for flow chemistry is structuring and MRT providers make various strategies. Certain players focus on the high end systems market and keep on adding more capabilities to their products. In the meantime, inexpensive systems have recently been launched, gaining the attention of educational and research users. These systems will play a crucial role in the growth of flow chemistry.
Frédéric Breussin, Yole Développement’s Business Unit Manager for Medical Technologies, explained that MRT modules account for nearly 20% of the total cost of the systems, whereas the tool price accounts for more than 60%. This trend shows that how major companies enhanced the position of their market and improved their sales by expanding their offering from stand-alone modules to complete systems.
Source: http://www.yole.fr