What is the size of heat treatment market in CZ?

We often ask ourselves what our share of the heat treatment market is. This is mainly due to the fact that there are no relevant statistical data in our field.

Where heat treatment is the only source of income, it is still simple. All you have to do is choose from the Commercial Register the annual reports of all entities with an ID number, i.e., doing business as legal entities, and compare them. And if this information is not there, it is not a problem to estimate it based on knowledge of their equipment. We name this groups as Subcontractors.

On the second group, however, there are in-house heat treatment capacity, about which even the parent company often knows nothing, let alone suspect the share of the performance of such an in-house heat treatment division in the company’s turnover. In internal accounting, these are basically overhead costs and these are not reported externally to the company. Therefore, only a certain expert estimate can be made according to the knowledge of the type of furnaces and their number. These so-called „Captive “heat treatment capacities are therefore largely unknown.

In the third group, they are the same “captive” heat treatment capacity, but they provide part of their capacity to the free market. This is also a big challenge, because the data can only be estimated if we know the market in detail. This group is the mixture between Subcontractors and Captive.

It is still the fourth group, but it is completely minor and exceptional. This is the case when an investor builds a custom heat treatment shop for one customer. Although such a shop functions as a commercial heat treatment shop, it does not provide any external services. So, it’s such a hybrid between Subcontractors and Captive

Therefore, if we summarize all these estimates, we can say that the size of the market in the Czech Republic is approximately CZK 3,529 million. Of this amount, 45% are subcontractors and the rest, i.e., 55% Captive (Fig. No. 1).

Is it accurate? No, it certainly isn’t. But what we can say almost exactly that the size of the market, commercial heat treaters is 946 million CZK (Fig. No. 2). But how much capacity, from those mentioned in-house heat treatment shops, is actually provided to the free market is a question mark. My analysis shows that 59% of the commercially viable market is managed by commercial shops, the rest, 41%, by in-house as part of filling free capacities.

Fig.  1 – Total market with heat treatment in CZ

Fig.  2 – Share of commercial heat treatment shops on the Subcontractor market in CZ

An interesting look at the structure of the free market for custom processing. For the sake of completeness, I have also included commercial coating (PVD / CVD) and laser hardening in these statistics, because they are closely related to heat treatment, and the principle of providing the service is completely identical.

I came up with a surprisingly large number for the coating, a total of 17%. Its share of the free market is therefore significantly higher than the vacuum heat treatment itself (Fig.  3). If we exclude PVD / CVD and laser hardening from the statistics, we get the situation according to Fig. 4. In both cases, the largest market share still belongs to multi-purpose heat treatment and this picture will not change immediately. However, there is a forecast that by 2030, the number of newly installed vacuum furnaces will be the same as the number of multi-purpose furnaces, simply because SQ furnaces leave a much larger carbon footprint than vacuum furnaces. Thus, the area of vacuum will increase, while the area of multipurpose processing will stagnate, respectively. decline. However, it is necessary to realize that we must also include LPC, LPN and plasma technologies in the area of vacuum, and then it is a ratio of 51% versus 32%.

Fig. 3 – The share of individual technologies on the CZ market

Fig. 4 – Share of individual technologies on the market without PVD / CVD and laser surface hardening in CZ

And what is the position of commercial heat treaters on the market? An attempt to evaluate it is shown in Figure 5. Bodycote has, of course, the largest market share. None of the other players on the market can match its size. The second place is surprisingly occupied by the former Katring Plus, today Techniques Surface ČR, with Arcor technology and the third place belongs to the Moravian Galvamet.

Fig. 5 – The share of individual commercial heat treatment shops on the Subcontractor market in CZ

Liberec, May 25,  2021

Jiří Stanislav