International. According to experts from consulting firm BSRIA, the size of the global air conditioning (AC) sector is more significant than that of heating, renewable energy and building automation and control systems (BACS).
The global AC market is dominated by splits, which is a reflection of large Asian markets, where splits also act as a heating product. He noted that this should be seen only as a guide, as the major heating markets are not significant AC markets and vice versa.
China continues to dominate the AC markets, followed by the US and Japan. The Chinese market has been boosted by the latest five-year plan, as well as a hot summer that resulted in distributor-level stock replenishment and incentives to switch to greener equipment.
After the overall global drop in sales in 2016, mainly due to the impact of the slowdown in China, BSRIA has seen a recovery in 2017, with total volume sales estimated to reach 136 million CA units.
"Splits are the most significant market globally, with sales expected to reach around 113 million VRF-exclusive outdoor units in 2017. China and Asia Pacific account for 70 percent of global sales, with China occupying a dominant position in the market, therefore what happens particularly in the Chinese market, has an impact on global trends. VRF continues to succeed with growth of more than 20 percent expected in 2017 supported by the rebound in overall construction markets, which has had modest growth of two percent in 2017.
These trends occur in the broader context of uncertainty surrounding the phase-out of HFC refrigerant gases. There was a continued rise in refrigerant prices in 2017, with the price of fluorspar hitting a six-year high last year. In addition, tax implementations in Europe make 2018 very uncertain with open questions about how the introduction of new refrigerants will impact the availability of units (and more importantly, their costs) and how much this will affect the prices of air conditioning units.
Source: BSRIA.
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