According to a statistics report released by HVAC HOME recently, the market capacity in 2016 was increased by 10%, reached far more 70 billion RMB after slashing in 2015.  But notable, the shipment of chillers still showed decrease trend.  The increase drivers of 2016 market were the F-gas products, including multi splits and unitary units, especially multi splits with over 20% of growth rate and 40% of market share as the leader of China HVAC industry.  Moreover, there was no obvious change in the investment environment in 2016.  Middle and small projects representing by hospitals, schools, shopping departments and restaurants played the significant roles, which preferred to multi splits, unitary and modular products.  In 2016, the growth rates of nine major products were: centrifugal chillers (-2.2%), air-cooled screw chillers (-2.4%), water-cooler screw chillers (-6.9%), multi splits (+21.3%), LiBr chillers (-8.7%), water/ground source heat pumps (-19%), modular units (-3.0%), unitary units (+16.4%) and terminals (+0.3%).

Looking at the regional markets, East China is the biggest market with the huge weight of Jiangsu Province as the bellwether of the whole industry.  Followed by Zhejiang, it grew 16% reaching the highest record in latest three years.  Experienced downturn for last two years, nearly saturated Shanghai market rolled over to create 12.3% of increase in 2016.

Looking at the brands, Gree, Midea and Daikin were still the top three brands in Chinese HVAC market, with total 42.5% of market share reaching the new record high, which means the high brand concentration and less space to middle and small brands.  There was no change to European and American brands including Johnson Control, McQuary, Carrier, Trane, Dunham Bush, EK and Climaveneta, occupying 20% share of Chinese central air conditioning market.

More information at zhanglh@cadg.cn.