Atomizing Metal Powder Market

The global atomizing metal powder market is projected to register a healthy CAGR of 6.91% during the forecast period. The protuberant factors favoring the global market growth are increasing demand for powder metallurgy in the automotive industry and diverse applications served by atomized metal powders in surface coating process. The growth of the automotive industry coupled with the rising demand for lightweight and high strength components is expected to boost demand for atomized metal powders in the automotive applications including transmissions, engines, and chassis components. Moreover, the demand for advanced surface coating technologies has been on a continuous rise in the major end-use industries such as aerospace, steel, oil & gas, and power generation. Atomized metal powders are essential in these technologies and the demand is expected to increase in the near future. However, the fluctuations in the prices of iron ore, the major raw material, is expected to be a key factor hampering the market growth. Nevertheless, the robust demand for atomized metal powders in the 3D printing applications is assumed to be a major aspect providing a thrust to the market growth in the years to follow.

Powder metallurgy (PM) is recognized as a green and sustainable manufacturing technology to produce finished components in the automotive industry. Metal powders are common to all powder metallurgy processes; hence the powder manufacturing process and resultant powder properties are critically important and inherently linked.

The ability of the PM process to produce reliable and consistent precision parts at a mass scale and at a cheap rate has increased its adoption in the automotive industry. The increasing use of PM over the traditional processes (such as machining, casting, and extrusion) is mainly attributed to the significant cost savings, high dimensional accuracy, good part-to-part reproducibility, minimal post-processing, dimensional freedom, and compositional complexity offered using the PM process. In addition, the PM process has a high degree of flexibility allowing the tailoring of the physical characteristics of a product to suit the specific property and performance requirements of the automobile component manufacturers.

The automotive industry recently is facing a challenge of procuring components that are light in weight, exhibit high durability and reliability, and offer superior performance to produce comfortable and safe vehicles at a low cost. PM is a green and energy-saving process, offering improved performance and greater design flexibility and helps to achieve the changing needs and demand from existing and potential customers of automobile manufacturers while maintaining higher value than competing materials technologies. The use of PM in automobiles such as cars, buses, trucks, and vans can be broadly classified into transmissions, engines, and chassis. The application areas include windshield wipers, connecting rods, valves, fuel injection components, actuators, heaters, gear parts, lightning systems, brake systems, window lifter, sensors, battery, transmission, and shock absorber parts.

The legislation to increase fuel efficiency is the other major factor increasing the use of PM in automobile applications. The Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) goal has stimulated the demand for lightweight design, lightweight materials, and alternative energy sources. Similarly, to curb CO2 emissions, there are several regulations in the major automotive markets including Europe (Regulation for fleet CO2 emissions for 95 g CO2/km by 2020), China [Draft fleet fuel economy legislation (Phase IV)], and US (Greenhouse Gas II for 125 g CO2/km by 2020). This is expected to fuel the demand for lightweight and efficient materials, which is expected to boost demand for powder metallurgy. In addition, the Zero Emission Vehicle (ZEV) program in California and the New Energy Vehicle (NEV) program in China are planned to be implemented after 2020, which is expected to boost the demand for lightweight components and thus for metal powders.

Thus, the growing automotive industry and increasing demand for atomized metal powders in the powder metallurgy processes for manufacturing lightweight automobile components are expected to be the major factors driving the global market growth.

Additive manufacturing (AM), also popularly known as 3D printing, is a radical technology emerging as an alternative to traditional manufacturing technologies. It has been defined as the process of laying down material in successive layers to form a desired 3D object using computer integrated manufacturing technology. It is regarded as the most effective method of fabricating prototypes with significant savings in time and cost as well as a high level of flexibility in making a product with complex design.

AM as a high-tech industry is still evolving though it has already gained importance in the manufacturing sector. With the increased demand for meeting the customer needs in terms of product quality and variety, AM technology has been upgraded from rapid prototyping to rapid manufacturing. Additive manufacturing is available for any type of material including metals, plastics, ceramics, and biomaterials. Metals have been the traditional materials in the manufacturing sector for centuries. The enhanced properties and advanced capabilities offered by metallic materials have led to their increasing demand in the aerospace, bio-medical, automotive, and tooling industries.

Factors

Advantages

1. Cost Savings

i. Eliminates the need for large bulk inventory

ii. Eliminates the need for high volume production facilities

iii. Reduces transportation cost

iv. Potential energy savings in the aerospace sector range from 5% to 25%

v. Reduces labor inputs: eliminate low level assembly workers

i. Reduces required tooling and machining centers

2. Speed Responsiveness

ii. Eliminates the time lag between design and product

iii. Enabling on-demand manufacturing

iv. Improving process flexibility

3. Quality Improvement

i. Reduces production waste

ii. More optimum products across many industries

iii. Eliminates excess parts that cause drag and add weight

4. Environmental Impact

i. Improves sustainability

ii. Reduces carbon footprint

Source: The International Journal of Advanced Manufacturing Technology, Journal of Materials Science, Secondary Research, and MRFR Analysis

Various metals available in powdered form including titanium, steel, aluminum, and copper are fully dense, have a spherical shape and an excellent flowability, with a precise particle size distribution, and are perfectly reproducible, and hence used in a variety of complex applications in demanding industries, such as aviation, medical, dental, and automotive.

Gas-atomized cobalt-, titanium-, nickel-, and iron-based alloy powders are used in aerospace, automotive, oil & gas, energy, and medical 3D printing applications. Moreover, precious metals such as platinum, gold, palladium, and silver are used in additive manufacturing owing to their special characteristics such as good biocompatibility, high-temperature and thermal shock resistance. The major application segments include the jewelry, medical (for manufacturing implants), and aerospace industries.

The metal powder industry has witnessed significant growth in recent years on account of the development of advanced materials and widening scope of application in a broad range of industries. The increasing use of powdered metals in the additive manufacturing process/technology is expected to provide an impetus to the growth of the market in the years to follow and is expected to create lucrative opportunities for the market players during the review period.

Iron and copper are majorly used metals used for powder production. Iron-based atomizing powder accounted for over 70% of the share in 2018. The iron metal obtained by the purification and processing of iron ore is used to produce atomized iron powders of a multitude of grades. These iron powders are used in a variety of applications including friction materials and products (in the vehicles, trains and aircraft in brake pads, drum brake lining, and other applications), sintered parts (sintered components in large electrical machinery, automotive components, and in power tools), brazing and welding (used to create a tight seal between components), thermal surface coating (as a surface coating for parts that need to withstand high temperatures), and soft magnetic composites (used in the composition of soft magnetic composites for electromagnetic applications).

The price of iron ore has fluctuated over the past five years greatly as its global demand has witnessed ups and downs with economic recession and expansion. The price of iron is primarily determined by the ability of iron suppliers to extract and transport the product, as well as the demand for goods and services that require iron, majorly the steel industry. The other factors include economic growth, interest rates, availability and attractiveness of substitute goods, and political considerations. Moreover, a few key players, both on the supply and demand side, dominate the iron ore market. As per the data from the US Geological Survey, the top five iron ore producing countries control about 85% of the production and 73% of reserves.

The fluctuations in the prices of iron ore impact the prices of iron metal and hence the prices of iron powder. At the beginning of 2014, the prices of iron ore peaked at USD 139 per metric ton and then decreased significantly to reach USD 70 per metric ton in January 2015. The trend continued and a further decline in iron ore prices was noticed reaching USD 40 per metric ton in January 2016. However, with the growing demand for iron in steel production, the prices soared to USD 80 per metric ton in January 2017. Since then, the iron ore price further witnessed fluctuations with it reaching USD 90 per ton in March 2017 and falling to USD 56 per ton in June 2017. Since then, the iron ore price remained range-bound at around USD 65–70 per ton till January 2018. The price has shot up by more than half since the beginning of 2019, with USD 75 per ton in January 2019 touching the USD 120 per ton mark in July 2019.

Fluctuating iron ore price is likely to affect the overall price of atomizing iron powder which is likely to result in an increase in the import and logistic costs. Volatile prices of iron are expected to hinder the overall market growth and creates intense competition between the major players.

Thus, fluctuating prices of iron as a raw material is expected to be a key factor hampering the market growth in the years to follow.