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TDA’s 2023 Outlook Mid-Year Update Available

The major factors shaping economic conditions for 2023 are similar to those in the year prior with recovery—from the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine—on the distant horizon. Persistent inflation continues to reduce growth in the analytical instruments industry as customers have less cash available to spend. Currency effects also further reduce the purchasing power of many customers against the stronger US dollar.

With the return of labs to pre- pandemic operations, the products and technologies that experienced record surges in demand in response to the pandemic, such as genetic analysis tools and cold-storage equipment, will suffer the largest drops in demand. In light of these conditions, we have adjusted our expectation of growth for the analytical instrument industry in 2023 downward to a market size of $68.5 billion.

Download TDA’s 2023 Outlook Mid-Year Update report to continue reading.

IMF Cites Slight Improvement in July’s World Economic Outlook Update

Despite the May declaration by the World Health Organization (WHO) that COVID-19 is no longer a global health emergency and the resolution of many supply chain and shipping problems, global recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has slowed, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in its July 2023 World Economic Outlook (WEO) Update: Near-Term Resilience, Persistent Challenges. The increases in central bank policy rates enacted to combat inflation have hindered economic activity, resulting in weak global growth. But growth estimates are slightly higher than predicted in April’s WEO on account of strength of the services sector in the first quarter of 2023. The most recent publication projects that global growth will drop from 3.5% in 2022 to 3.0% in 2023 and remain at 3.0% in 2024. Headline inflation is predicted to decline to from 8.7% in 2022 to 6.8% in 2023 and 5.2% in 2024.

Although the consumption of services increased early in 2023, other sectors, including manufacturing, experienced weakness. According to the IMF, the slowdown of industrial production in advanced economies has suppressed global trade and manufacturing in emerging markets. The report predicts that world trade growth will drop from 5.2% in 2022 to 2.0% in 2023 and then rise to 3.7% in 2024.

Corresponding to the decline in economic activity, oil prices are expected to decrease by about 21% in 2023 after increasing 39% in 2022. Lower commodity prices worldwide along with tightening monetary policy will drive the disinflation in 2023.

 

The IMF predicts 93% of the world’s advanced economies will experience declining growth of 1.5% in 2023 (down from 2.7%). In the US, an increase in consumption in 2023 is not anticipated to last, as savings have declined, and the Federal Reserve is expected to again raise interest rates. In Europe, strength in services and tourism has been offset by weakness in manufacturing in Germany. Pent-up demand in Japan, however, will result in growth of 1.4% in 2023, up from 1.0% in 2022.

In general, developing economies are expected to make a stronger showing, averaging 4.0% growth in 2023 and 4.1% in 2024. This growth will vary by region, however, with about 61% of the economies growing faster in 2023. Emerging and developing Asia is expected to grow 5.3% in 2023 and then dip to 5.0% in 2024. China will hit 5.2% in 2023 then drop to 4.5% in 2024 (stronger-than-expected net exports have helped to offset weakened investment resulting from the real estate downturn this year). Strong domestic investment in India has prompted a projection of 6.1% growth in 2023.

The analytical instruments industry continues to experience ups and downs of global economic recovery. The recovery of supply chains has improved prospects for orders and delivery of products. On the other hand, persistent inflation is a consideration in laboratories’ budgets, likely limiting their ability to purchase instruments. However, according to the US Energy Information Administration, US crude oil production is expected to reach record highs in 2023, which will drive increased demand for materials analysis and process analytical instrumentation products.

Market Profile: PFAS Testing

Known as “forever chemicals,” per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are some of the most pervasive pollutants in the environment. A class of synthetic organic chemicals first introduced into products in the 1940s and used widely for their exceptional repelling properties, they are linked by a hard-to-break carbon-fluorine bond. In the intervening decades, PFAS have seeped into waterways, soil, and people’s and animals’ bodies.

Exposure to PFAS is linked to health problems including increased cholesterol levels, developmental delays in children, and risk of some cancers. With thousands of individual PFAS known to exist and 600 used in products in the United States, the full scope of PFAS-associated health effects is not known. But their ubiquity is unquestioned; a 2020 study found that most US residents get their drinking water from sources containing PFAS, and a study published this July estimated PFAS are present in nearly half of all the country’s sink taps.

Around 20 US states have introduced guidelines, public notification requirements, and monitoring requirements for PFAS levels in drinking water. Some have also limited or banned their use in firefighting foam, a common source of contamination. In March this year, the White House proposed the first national standards setting upper limits for six PFAS in US drinking water. The standards state that levels of perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS), some of the most common and well-studied PFAS, cannot exceed 4.0 parts per trillion. Four others will be regulated in mixtures with each other rather than alone, to assess for the additive effects of their toxicities. The rule is expected to be finalized by the end of the year. In addition to monitoring for and notifying the public of PFAS presence, it requires public water systems to remove them if they exceed the limits. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates this will cost water utilities $772 million a year.

The private sector is also paying attention to PFAS. Many companies have pledged to phase out manufacturing of the chemicals, and in June 3M settled a $10 billion lawsuit over PFAS contamination in nationwide public water systems. In all, these existing regulations, potential future rules, and increasing public attention on contamination and its effects have led to growing demand for reliable and accurate PFAS testing. TDA values the PFAS testing market, currently in its infancy, at about $200 million, with double-digit growth over the next several years, topping $400 million by 2028 driven by demand in Europe and Asia.

The EPA has developed and validated methods for testing PFAS in water, soils, and air. Broadly, these methods are divided between targeted analysis, which measures for a specific known set of PFAS chemicals, and non-targeted analysis, which seeks to identify all known and unknown PFAS in a sample. High resolution MS techniques like quadrupole time-of-flight (Q-TOF) MS and Orbitrap are used for unknown screening. Routine analysis is typically accomplished with LC-MS/MS via a triple quadrupole system, and many major companies have begun gearing their relevant instruments towards this application, including SCIEX (whose TQ system is used in many contract labs), Waters, Agilent, PerkinElmer, and Thermo Fisher. Because of PFAS’ ubiquity in everything from personal care products to lab equipment, contamination and background interference is a concern. Waters, Agilent, and Thermo Fisher also offer solid phase extraction systems and cartridges, and Agilent offers PFAS-free conversion kits for the company’s LC systems to address this issue.

Instrument Industry Expected to Pick Up After Fed’s Final Interest Rate Hike

The United States economy has weathered a bumpy ride over the last year, and the analytical instrument industry has, too. While demand for workers was high and unemployment dipped low in the US through 2022 and into 2023, inflation remains stuck at its highest rates in decades, and consumers’ wallets are feeling the burn.

But there could be relief ahead. Inflation grew 4% in May, the smallest annual increase in two years. And after the Federal Reserve raised interest rates last month (the tenth time in the last 14 months) to 5.00%–5.25%, it announced a pause in June. However, the reprieve came with a caveat: a majority of the Fed’s interest-rate committee members anticipate needing to raise rates at least twice more before the end of the year. In a press conference on June 14, Fed Chair Jerome Powell indicated that the central bank hopes to use the pause to closely evaluate the situation. These apprehensive moves have created oscillating sentiment in the instrument market, with some executives expecting a downturn and others anticipating growth. Overall, expectations are that the year will end with no substantial change in the market.

As coronavirus-related revenues have dropped off (the US COVID-19 public health emergency officially ended May 11), companies with large life-sciences offerings are coming down off pandemic highs. Thermo Fisher reported a 9% drop in first quarter revenue between 2023 and 2022 and cut several hundred jobs this spring. Illumina’s Q1 earnings dropped 11% year-over-year, and in November, the company announced a cost-cutting plan that included laying off 5% of its global workforce. Danaher’s 2023 Q1 revenues are down 7% from last year, and the company revised down its yearly sales growth forecast partially because of a biotech funding squeeze aggravated by the March collapse of Silicon Valley Bank. (Biopharma funding overall has dipped since 2021.)

Some vendors outside of the life-sciences space have also had rocky recent quarters, including Waters, which reported sales up 3% year-over-year in Q4 2022 (and up 7% overall in 2022) but down 1% in Q1 2023. Despite this lackluster first quarter performance, Waters, along with Thermo Fisher, Illumina, and Danaher all predict their expected yearly earnings to stay on track in 2023. Other companies have posted gains. Agilent’s Q1 revenues are up 5%, and the company reported 11% yearly growth in 2022 with its CEO promising no layoffs in 2023. Companies focused on process analytical instrumentation have also done well; for example, Siemens grew first quarter revenues 10% and had their all-time strongest start to a fiscal year.

And sentiment is improving in the overall US economy. S&P Global’s Purchasing Managers Index (PMI), which tracks the health of services and manufacturing sectors, rose to 54.5 in May, its highest level since April 2022. The labor market remains hot, with the US adding 253,000 jobs in April and reaching its lowest unemployment rate since 1969. (Gains were relatively lean for manufacturing, which added 11,000 jobs, but an improvement from March when the sector lost about 1,000). After stalled growth in quarters 1–3 this year, TDA expects the market for analytical instruments to pick up in Q4 and to be flat for the year.

Market Profile: Carbon Capture

Demand for carbon capture, the trapping and storing of carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted by industrial processes, is expected to increase in the coming years as global climate agreements and individual countries’ climate goals come into effect. Broadly, there are three methods of carbon capture: post-combustion capture, in which CO2 is separated from exhaust; pre-combustion capture, which gasifies solid fuel and removes CO2, and oxy-fuel combustion, wherein fuel is burned in a mixture of pure oxygen and CO2 is captured from resulting exhaust gas. Once CO2 is captured, it is transported and stored, typically in geological formations deep underground, or is utilized in a number of emerging applications.

Process analytical instrumentation systems play a variety of monitoring and quality control roles during these steps. Gas analysis systems are needed to measure the concentration of CO2 and other gases throughout the process. Gas chromatography systems can be used to separate and analyze components of the gas stream before or after capture, and to detect impurities in the captured CO2. Spectroscopy techniques can also be applied to purity detection, including Raman spectroscopy, while infrared spectroscopy can be employed to measure the concentration of CO2 and other gases in the stream. Finally, NMR spectrometry can be used to study the qualities of rock structure into which CO2 is injected after capture, an important step in evaluating how CO2 will interact with its storage reservoir.

Carbon capture is not a new method for curbing CO2 emissions. Enhanced oil recovery operations trapped CO2 from oil and gas production and re-injected it into Texas oil fields in the 1970s, and the world’s first commercial CO2 storage plant opened in 1996 off the coast of Norway. But its widespread adoption has been hindered in part because of high upfront costs. The International Energy Agency says current global facilities capture about 45 billion tons of CO2 per year, but a 2022 analysis by McKinsey estimates that uptake must grow 120 times by 2050 to achieve global net-zero targets. The 2022 Inflation Reduction Act increased per-ton subsidies for CO2 sequestration, which could further incentivize its adoption by US firms.

As such, the current global carbon capture and storage market is small but burgeoning. While specific instrumental demand is difficult to pin down and vendors are still assessing users’ needs for its application, carbon capture’s expected growth represents a great potential opportunity for process analytical instrumentation vendors. TDA estimates the carbon capture market for these instruments is about $50 million, with double-digit CAGR over the next five years. The overall worldwide demand for process analytical instruments is estimated at about $5.3 billion in 2023 and is expected to reach about $6.4 billion by 2027. Leading vendors making process analytical instruments include ABB, Siemens, Danaher, and Thermo Fisher Scientific.

Connecting the “Lab of the Future” with Scitara

In a typical laboratory, most machines and tools are siloed, detached, and unable to communicate with each other. Other industries have adopted a class of software systems known as “integration platform as a service” (iPaaS) to link the many apps and technologies they use, such as MuleSoft, Zapier, or Boomi. But labs have been slow to adopt such tools.

“Labs just don’t have great connectivity,” says Geoff Gerhardt, chief technology officer of laboratory software company Scitara. One reason, he says, is that a lab’s instruments come from many different vendors. “There hasn’t been great standardization in the lab. Every vendor that makes software tends to have a slightly different … interface,” he explains.

Labs also use legacy technology that is not immediately cloud connectable. Security and compliance are also concerns. Instruments are often hooked up to heavily protected networks, and labs involved in pharma must comply with regulatory controls that are not compatible with most existing software integration solutions, Gerhardt says.

The consequences can pile up. Users often have to manually enter data into a lab’s systems, increasing the possibility of errors during this physical transcription. Workers also often must back up data individually across a lab’s many systems, a potentially incomplete process. The efficiency of each lab user, and of the lab as a whole, can suffer.

Founded in 2019 with headquarters in Marlborough, MA, Scitara has created a software platform called the Scitara DLX that connects all instruments and systems in the lab. The platform, which the company categorizes as an “iPaaS for science,” links many assets to a central cloud hub with the aforementioned concerns in mind. “What we’re trying to do is create the same environment in the lab: this common automation platform where we provide connectivity into all the different lab assets,” Gerhardt says.

The technology connects a cloud-based platform to a computer-based instrument or application (like an ELN) via a network connection or to an offline machine (like a balance) through a small device plugged into the instrument’s RS-232 port. Each connected asset can publish events or actions to the cloud, communicating through this nexus.

Users view their connections on a dashboard, where they can direct connected assets to perform actions and create automations across the workspace—for example, recording simultaneous temperature and humidity readings from two separate sensors. Scitara designed the system so simple automations are easily customized by users with no coding required. “That democratizes who can create these workflows, [which] will keep the lab more efficient and up to date,” Gerhardt says.

All of this happens through one encrypted channel. “We have an agent that gets installed inside that network, and all of the devices and applications communicate with that,” Gerhardt explains. “There’s one secure connection that goes out to our cloud service.” For laboratories that require it, the system provides baked-in compliance monitoring controls.

Several vendors have partnered with Scitara to pair the iPaaS with their products, including Agilent’s OpenLab CDS and lab workflow management software, PerkinElmer’s Signals Research Suite informatics software, and Mettler Toledo’s balances, pH meters, and software (more partners can be found here).

Scitara currently works with a number of large pharmaceutical companies, and would like to work with other kinds of labs. “The lab space is so expansive. We are keen to get to a lot of those customers that have the same sort of issues.” Labs who are interested can get in touch with Scitara here.

IMF Predicts Signs of Fragile Improvement in April’s World Economic Outlook

After years of what the International Money Fund (IMF) calls “powerful blows” to the global economy, modest signs of improvement are expected into 2024. In its April 2023 World Economic Outlook (WEO): A Rocky Recovery, the IMF projects global growth will slope from 3.4% in 2022 to 2.8% in 2023, before bumping up to 3.0% in 2024. Global inflation has begun to recover (albeit more slowly than predicted in January’s WEO Update), and will drop to 7.0% in 2023 and 4.9% in 2024 after hitting 8.7% in 2022.

While many of 2022’s adverse shocks continue, including the war in Ukraine and the threat of COVID-19 outbreaks, the IMF predicts these factors will ease this year and will not affect commodity prices and supply chains as drastically. China’s economy has gained strength since COVID variant outbreaks shut down activity and disrupted supply chains in 2022. The IMF expects this improvement to spill over into countries with strong trade and tourism links to China.

However, the global recovery is tenuous, the IMF notes in their report. The recent failures of a handful of regional banks in the US and the loss of confidence in Credit Suisse have placed the financial sector in a fragile position, the IMF says. Despite central banks’ continuous and synchronous raising of interest rates, the post-pandemic labor market remains tight, and inflation remains “sticky.”

In line with global trends, the IMF predicts 90% of the world’s advanced economies will see declining growth in 2023. Developing economies overall are expected to make a stronger showing, hitting 3.9% growth in 2023 and 4.2% in 2024. However, this growth will vary widely by region, for example, with Latin America and the Caribbean at 1.6% in 2023 and 2.2% in 2024, and China hitting 5.2% in 2023 then dropping to 4.5% in 2024 (owing to an increased standard of living achieved in the country and the corresponding decrease in the rate of change).

As fuel and energy prices have declined from 2022 highs, inflation is expected to fall across the board, but the IMF forecasts target inflation won’t be reached until 2025. “We are therefore entering a perilous phase during which economic growth remains low by historical standards and financial risks have risen, yet inflation has not yet decisively turned the corner,” IMF economist Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas writes in the WEO.

For the analytical instruments industry, this rocky recovery could have spotty effects. The sticker shock stemming from stubborn inflation could force laboratories to cut back on purchasing new instruments. But while the global energy crisis has eased since the first blows of the war in Ukraine, US crude oil production is expected to increase to record highs in 2023, according to the US Energy Information Administration’s April Short-Term Energy Outlook. This growth will continue to drive demand for materials analysis and process analytical instrumentation products.

The Food Testing Market

The World Health Organization estimates nearly one in ten people becomes sick from food each year, and a total of 420,000 of those die from the illness. The novel coronavirus’ possible origin in a seafood market and its many variants have also drawn attention to how new and rapidly mutating microbes can wreak havoc on public health. In addition to protecting consumers’ health and confirming nutritional content throughout the production process, laboratory testing of food is required to ensure food authenticity. According to the US Food & Drug Administration (FDA), food fraud costs the global food industry as much as $40 billion each year.

TDA’s new Food & Environmental Analytical Market Report, released in March, explores the market trajectory and technologies used for testing food. Chromatography comprises about a quarter of market demand, and analytical HPLC is a leading method for identifying and quantifying ingredients, contaminants, and other food analytes. GC-MS is widely used to detect toxins such as BPA and acrylamide, or ethyl carbamate in fermented foods and beverages. Life sciences technologies like PCR and DNA sequencers, have been adopted by the food safety industry to detect pathogenic contamination and for the presence of GMOs. And mass spec, which is widely used to identify adulterants in food, is expected to show the fastest-growing demand into 2027.

TDA estimates the total analytical market for food testing in 2022 was valued $4.0 billion (up from $3.8 billion in 2021), and the overall market is expected to grow by mid-single digit compound annual growth rates (CAGR) between 2022 and 2027. Several factors will affect demand for food testing technologies, including a growing awareness of food safety issues among the public. The rapid expansion of cannabis legalization in US states (11 states have legalized recreational cannabis since 2020) will also play a role, as testing is needed to establish potency and ensure safety throughout the production workflow. And government food safety regulations and oversight will continue to drive demand throughout the remainder of the decade. As the home of many food and beverage companies and testing labs, the North American segment leads this demand, followed by the Asia Pacific market.

Although the compliance dates for most of the rules instated by in the US FDA’s landmark Food Safety Modernization Act of 2011 have already passed, the agency has recently embarked upon a new suite of initiatives dubbed a “New Era of Smarter Food Safety,” which aims to modernize and technologically integrate food safety testing and tracing. Food safety regulations in China are managed under the Food Safety Law, which was implemented in 2009 after a crisis of melamine contamination of milk and infant formula. The law was most recently updated in 2021 when several regulations or standards were added or revised. Also in 2021, China received a $400 million loan from the World Bank to strengthen food safety law enforcement, upgrade testing laboratories, and train laboratory technicians along produce, pork, and seafood production chains. These factors will help China be the fastest-growing regional end market for food testing. Click here to order TDA’s new Food & Environmental Analytical Market Report.

The Environmental Testing Market

The unfolding crisis in East Palestine, Ohio, where a cargo train carrying hazardous chemicals derailed in early February, is just the latest high-profile incident to evince the importance of environmental testing. The derailment and subsequent controlled burn of several train cars containing the carcinogenic chemical vinyl chloride, and the potential spill of other chemicals, prompted environmental and public health concerns in the surrounding community. Reports of thousands of dead fish in nearby waterways and residents experiencing headaches and rashes, among other incidents, emerged after the derailment.

In the weeks following the event, the United States Environmental Protection Agency has deployed equipment and personnel to conduct air, water, and soil sampling. The full scale of the impacts of the spill and burn will likely not be known for years, but in the meantime, the testing will help stakeholders gauge how contamination from the chemicals may harm the environment and the health of the community, and what countermeasures should be taken in response.

Among other factors, an expanding public awareness of environmental issues (in 2022 Gallup reported that 44% of Americans were concerned about the quality of the environment, with pollution of drinking water and waterways as their main topic of concern), and an increase in government oversight and regulations have helped boost demand for environmental testing. Survey data collected by TDA (available in an upcoming report on the environmental and food testing analytical market) confirms this increase in demand, with almost 60% of respondents, who represent a cross section of testing labs, expecting a future increase in workload. The overall market for environmental testing services and technologies is expected to reach a value of $3.2 billion in 2022 (up from $3.0 billion in 2021) and shows compound annual growth rates in the mid-single digits over the next five years, reinforced especially by demand from the North America and Asia Pacific regions.

Tightening regulations and government funding for environmental monitoring are expected to drive demand for environmental testing in the future. The EPA, which is responsible for carrying out environmental regulation in the US, is in a rebuilding phase after several years of staffing and funding cuts. Despite small gains since 2021, the agencyΓÇÖs workforce is still sagging, with a total staff numbering around 85% of what it was ten years ago, according to a report published earlier this year by E&E News.

In light of these setbacks and slowdowns, the EPA and a broader mission of environmental regulation have been a central focus of the Biden administration. Just in the last several months, the administration has instated or reinstated rules that limit nitrogen dioxide emissions from vehicles and mercury emissions from power plants, and is expected in the coming weeks to issue new guidelines regulating PFAS, or “forever chemicals,” in drinking water. The agency’s yearly budget was set at $10.1 billion in the 2023 omnibus spending bill, about a 6% increase from the previous year, with a $71.6 million raise for enforcement and compliance efforts.

Several new federal funding bills include money for new environmental monitoring efforts that will prompt the need for increased testing. The $1 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, signed in November 2021, included $55 billion earmarked to expand clean water access, $21 billion for Superfund and brownfield site cleanup, and $100 million for toxic pollution prevention grants, among other related provisions. And the Inflation Reduction Act, passed in August 2022, provides $117.5 million for air pollution monitoring and $1.6 billion in grants for methane monitoring and mitigation.

Other factors will affect the environmental testing market in the US and beyond, including the long tail of the coronavirus pandemic. While community wastewater has long been tested for pathogens like cholera and the poliovirus, the method has proved valuable in detecting COVID-19 outbreaks. And in emerging geographic markets, the global demand for environmental testing will be driven by increasing industrialization, urbanization, and investment in infrastructure, with the Asia Pacific region expected to be the second fastest–growing market behind the US and North America.

IMF Projects Cratering Growth but Peaking Inflation in January World Economic Outlook Update

The global economy is not out of the proverbial woods just yet. But the record-high inflation that has plagued the world since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 is hitting its peak, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) reports in its January 2023 World Economic Outlook (WEO) Update: Inflation Peaking amid Low Growth. Though growth is expected to dip in 2023 and the shocks felt from tightening monetary policy, slowdowns in China, and the effects of the Russian war in Ukraine continue to radiate through the economy, the IMF says the adverse risks laid out in its October 2022 Outlook have moderated.

Real GDP was stronger than expected in many economies during the third quarter of 2022 (though likely cooled off in the fourth quarter, the IMF says), including those in the United States, Europe, and emerging market and developing economies. These economies experienced strong private consumption and investment domestically, with households spending more on services and tapping into their savings to do so. According to the IMF, energy markets were quicker to adjust to the effects of the war in Ukraine than anticipated, another positive surprise.

Looking ahead, global inflation is projected to decrease from its peak in 2022 of 8.8% to hit 6.6% in 2023, thanks to tightening monetary policy in central banks across the world. By 2024, global inflation will fall to 4.3%, a figure that is still higher than the pre-pandemic rate of 3.5%. Global economic growth has not begun to meaningfully recover just yet and is expected to drop from 3.4% in 2022 to 2.9% in 2023 (revised up 0.2 point from the October 2022 WEO), before rising back up to 3.1% in 2024.

The US economy has seen some encouraging signs in recent months, with 517,000 new jobs created and unemployment hitting 3.4% (a 50-year-low) in January of this year. On February 1, the Federal Reserve raised interest rates by only 0.25 point, its smallest increase since March 2022. But the successive hikes are expected to hamper US growth, which the IMF projects will drop from 2% in 2022 to 1.4% in 2023 and 1% in 2024.

Growth in the euro area and the United Kingdom is in even worse shape, expected to hit 0.7% and -0.6% respectively in 2023. These forecasts are a 0.9 point downward revision of the October 2022 WEO’s predictions for the UK, but a 0.2 point upward revision of those for the EU, reflecting the effects of fast rate hikes enacted by the European Central Bank. Nonetheless, inflation in the UK and in several European countries remains at or above 10%.

China continues to drive the outlook in Asia. After nearly three years of rigid zero-COVID lockdowns, China relaxed the policy in November 2022, clearing the way for a swifter economic recovery. The IMF estimates China’s real GDP slowed to 3% in 2022 but will rise to 5.2% in 2023 before slowing to 4% in 2024. This rebound could be uneven or stalled by the virus, as immunity levels are still low among the population, and the healthcare system in certain areas may not have the capacity to respond to wide outbreaks.

Other downside risks still loom over a potential recovery, chief among them the potential that the war in Ukraine could escalate and geopolitical fragmentation could intensify as a result. Despite aggressive interest rate hikes enacted across economies, inflation could persist if food and energy prices rise due to the war in Ukraine, or if the labor market remains tight and wages grow.

As explored in TDA’s 2023 Instrument Industry Outlook Report, the global economic situation points to a positive but uneven outlook for the analytical instruments industry, which has maintained growth through the last few uncertain years. If inflation does respond to tightening monetary policy and prices go down accordingly towards the end of 2023, consumers will be more apt to make large purchases like appliances and vehicles. Along those same lines, laboratories will have more purchasing power to buy large instruments, but these outcomes could be squashed if inflation doesn’t budge. And instruments will continue to be needed to respond to the global energy crisis, including atomic spectroscopy technologies for testing of coal-derived pollutants (world coal consumption hit an all-time high in 2022, according to the International Energy Agency), and materials analysis and process analytical instrumentation products, as US and OPEC crude oil production is expected to increase in 2023.