The whole compressor industry was not active in 2018 and the growth of hermetic reciprocating compressors slowed down.

According to the data of January to September of 2018 from ChinaIOL, the year-to-date production of hermetic reciprocating compressors increased by 4% to 126.62 million units.  As predicted, the annual shipment of hermetic reciprocating compressors will increase 2% when comparing with the same period of last year, despite of slight slowdown in 4^th quarter.

Industry development

The demand of China commercial refrigeration compressors is increasing with the development of China light commercial cabinets.  Mature residential compressors industry resulted in the manufacturers’ transformation to commercial market.  As the statistics, the shipments of commercial compressors increased by 20.6% to 7.97 million units.  The comprehensive development of commercial compressors was at the top of whole industry as well as residential sector.

With the inverter refrigerators shipments increasing, the demand for inverter hermetic reciprocating compressors keeps high growth rate.  By the end of this September, the shipments of inverter refrigerators increased 34.5% to 12.21 million units, accounting for 21.5% of the total.  The year-to-date shipments of inverter hermetic reciprocating compressors increased by 27.2% to 19.54 million units.

Growth comparison of light commercial and residential compressors (Source: ChinaIOL)

Growth comparison of common and inverter compressors (Source: ChinaIOL)

Overseas market

As the statistics, the year-to-date export of hermetic reciprocating compressors increased by 9.5% to 42.03 million units.  The top 3 destinations were India, Turkey and Indonesia.

Asia is still the largest market for China hermetic reciprocating compressors industry, with 5% increase, followed by Europe dropped 6%.  The export to America was down 5%, but 7% up to Africa.

Export trend of hermetic reciprocating compressors (Source: ChinaIOL)

It is predicted that the export is still a major driver of compressor industry development in coming years, especially the potential markets such as India, Southeast Asia and South Africa, but should pay more attention to the impacts of trade conflict, tax and cost increase.