Asian financial crisis of 1997. Such realignments are ultimately expected to result in greater pricecompetitiveness for export-led Asian suppliers, at the expense of US producers.
The report predicts that prospective gains are expected to shift increasingly to the maintenance/repair/operations (MRO) market, as original equipment market (OEM) demand decelerates with the aging economic expansion. The study also suggests that aftermarket conditions will be particularly favourable, due to the substantial amounts of new machinery and equipment put into use during the early/mid 1990s. whose repair and maintenance will create opportunities. Expectations are that only the aerospace industry will exhibit significant growth at the OEM end.
The best growth prospects will continue to be high performance products, such as mechanical face seals, rotary oil seals and non-metallic gaskets, constructed from advanced materials. Although generally priced at a premium, the performance advantages and extended lifetimes of these items are generally sufficient to justify their higher costs and so will continue to supplant lower-end items like compression packings, moulded packings and seals, and gaskets made from traditional materials (e.g., paper, felt, cork, commodity rubber).
Although growth in demand for metallic gaskets and seals will generally lag behind, there are specific niches with above average growth potential, in particular elastomer-coated multilayer steel (MLS) cylinder head gaskets.