Government monopolies will no longer be the major purchasers of water and power industry pumps. Large international corporations will be the new customers and will invest in pumps with lower life cycle costs even though initial costs are higher. International semiconductor, chemical, and pharmaceutical companies will equip plants throughout the world with the same pump designs and will force suppliers to provide global service. The greatest demand for pumps is for moving water from waterways and sources to residential and industrial users and then to remove the wastewater from these users through treatment and discharge back to the waterways. Quantities range from less than 1 gpm for metering of treatment chemicals to thousands of gpm for water and wastewater movement in large treatment plants.
Geographical variations are also significant.
In India, the pumping of drinking water from small wells is still a major need, whereas in Singapore large pumping systems are needed to move drinking water in from Malaysia. The variety of needs results in a variety of pump types and sizes. This does not include air operated diaphragm pumps which are forecast separately. Sales of reciprocating pumps will be boosted by the large future use of desalinated sea water for drinking water. This 90 percent reduction in desalination costs in just one decade will spur population development in the world's arid coastal regions from Southern California to Saudi Arabia.