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May 2002
Vol. 11, No. 5
p 39.
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Industry Facts & Figures
David Filmore
From Glassware to Gas Chromatographs

Sales for the laboratory products industry are growing at a steady pace.

Figure 1. Market breakdown for 2001 laboratory products industry sales.
Figure 1. Market breakdown for 2001 laboratory products industry sales. Source: Molecules, Money & Bolstering Throughput, Annual Market Analysis & Forecast; Laboratory Product Association; Copeland Economics Group, Inc., Jan 2002.
The laboratory products industry is a multifaceted enterprise that fuels the gamut of modern scientific endeavors.

U.S. domestic sales for the laboratory products market (including all facets of laboratory supplies and chemicals) increased by 5.5% in 2001 to $6.2 billion from the previous year, according to the Laboratory Products Association (LPA) 2002 Annual Market Analysis & Forecast, Molecules, Money & Bolstering Throughput, conducted by Copeland Economics Group. The increase was not as high as the 8–9% rises of the late 1990s, when the economy was expanding more rapidly. However, a constant intensification of R&D in some industries—most notably pharmaceuticals, which increased R&D spending by 18.7% between 2000 and 2001 (Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, www.phrma.org)—has allowed lab product sales to continue their moderate growth, even during a recession.

Not surprisingly, the industrial–bioscience market, which includes labs in the pharmaceutical and other manufacturing industries, such as chemicals, biotechnology, and electronics, is the largest customer base for lab products (see Figure 1). The diversity and volume of work carried out in this sector was responsible for sales of more than $3.2 billion in 2001, up by 5.7% from 2000. The patient care market, including clinical diagnostics and therapeutics, is another important area for laboratory products and accounted for more than $1.8 billion of last year’s pot. The fastest growing laboratory markets, however, are universities ($840 million, up 7.4 % from 2000) and government ($295 million, up 7.3% from 2000, including local, state, and federal). Biomedical research, particularly, is booming in academic and government labs as the budget for the National Institutes of Health continues to skyrocket (see “R&D budget: A Chemist’s View”, Today’s Chemist at Work, Feb 2002). Significant portions of these research dollars transfer over to laboratory supplies spending.

Figure 2. U.S. sales of laboratory products: durable vs. nondurable
Figure 2. U.S. sales of laboratory products: durable vs. nondurable. Source: Molecules, Money & Bolstering Throughput, Annual Market Analysis & Forecast; Laboratory Product Association; Copeland Economics Group, Inc., Jan 2002.
The laboratory products industry can be broken into two broad categories: durables, such as analytical instruments and other lab equipment, and nondurables, which include everything from chemicals to pipettes to disposable multiwell plates and biochips. The nondurables market is more than double the size of the durables market ($4.3 billion vs $1.8 billion in 2001; see Figure 2).

The future performance of the industry will largely depend on changing technological priorities and the state of the overall economy. For now, the LPA forecasts that domestic sales will continue to grow by 5% annually in 2002 and 2003.

David Filmore is an associate editor of Today’s Chemist at Work. Send your comments or questions regarding this article to tcaw@acs.org or the Editorial Office, 1155 16th St N.W., Washington, DC 20036.

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