Europe Process Automation - Market Share Analysis, Industry Trends & Statistics, Growth Forecasts (2025 - 2030)

The Europe Process Automation Market is expected to register a CAGR of 6.18% during the forecast period.

Key Highlights

• The IoT demand trend is expected to shift toward industrial space from consumer demand over the near future, primarily driven by various Industry 4.0 applications. Countries like the United Kingdom are on the verge of the industrial revolution, as data is being used on a large scale for production while integrating it with various manufacturing systems throughout the supply chain.
• European nations have been at the forefront of adopting industrial automation solutions and have been under the government's constant support. For instance, the UK government revealed the Industrial Strategy primarily outlined a plan to invest GBP 2 billion per year by 2020 for new research and development in the technology sector. Smart manufacturing and the Industrial Internet of Things (IIot) will be built upon the work that automation has already forged over these years. Focusing on the possibilities that the automation solutions will enable will present the opportunity for multiple industries to push the boundaries of technological innovation, which is crucial for the UK economy in a post-Brexit phase. Automation solutions are expected to revolutionize the process industries.
• Furthermore, process industries, such as chemical and petrochemical, paper and pulp, water and wastewater treatment, energy and utilities, oil and gas, pharmaceutical, food, and beverages, are expected to fuel growth.
• Industrial system architects, integrators, and machine builders have leveraged connected computing advances to aid manufacturing facilities function more efficiently. The rising need for real-time intelligence, better control of operations, scheduling, and increasing market penetration of big data analytics in the manufacturing industry is expected to generate demand for advanced process automation in the near future. Big data analytics has been used to refine complicated processes and manage supply chains.
• Moreover, big data analytics allows an enterprise to use factory automation to shift from reactionary practices to predictive ones. This change targets to improve the efficiency of the process and performance of the product.

Europe Process Automation Market Trends

Pharmaceutical Industry is Expected to Hold Significant Market Share

• Automation is embedded in primary aspects such as Active Pharma Ingredients (API) and other secondary aspects, including packaging and distribution. Digital transformation provides new operational efficiency, quality, process automation, and employee productivity to pharmaceutical companies in the region.
• Furthermore, Lonza selected Rockwell Automation to implement the Lonza strategic vision of bringing the digital factory to nine former Capsugel facilities that manufacture drug capsules. The company has selected Rockwell Automation's PharmaSuite MES software to digitize the operations in its manufacturing operations. This solution would help avoid disruptions during high volume periods of just-in-time orders for on-demand production.
• Additionally, Lonza would use PharmaSuite MES software and FactoryTalk InnovationSuite software to better trace products down to the individual capsule carton and gain insights into performance and production. Segregation of SAP and PharmaSuite MES helped avoid the disruption of a global enterprise resource planning ERP shutdown or required maintenance by enforcing workflows and collecting necessary information.
• Moreover, the post-COVID-19 workforce and organization would also likely adopt new, more efficient ways of working. New capabilities would also be needed within operations functions as the workforce shifts from manual skills to more technical skills. As the adoption of automation increases, pharmaceutical-operations organizations might have a greater need for talent that can program, operate, and interpret data from these new technologies. This would require significant up-skilling and capability-building efforts alongside ongoing strategic planning.
• Over the past three months, many pharma companies in Europe have mobilized their employees to remote working conditions. In such a scenario, automation helps them continue the essential processes unobstructed. Automation in drug discovery enhances the reliability of the entire process by minimizing manual errors, augments the throughput, and improves the ability to reproduce.

United Kingdom Accounts for the Largest Market Share

• The food and beverage industry maintains some of the highest hygiene standards in the country while delivering high-volume production systems. In addition, competitive forces demand that a business is efficient, both in terms of the raw materials consumed and the cost of manufacturing. Delivering these objectives is a crucial part of remaining in the industry. Seasonality of demand and labor forces have also prompted the industry to adopt increased automation, thus assisting the market's growth.
• Automation in the food industry increases competitiveness by eliminating errors and waste, enhancing efficiency and productivity, and expanding profit margins. Cost savings can be diverted to R&D and other business improvements.
• Moreover, with investment roll-outs by the government to revive the pandemic hit United Kingdom economy, infrastructure, and the electronics industry are marked as the primary beneficiaries alongside the growth of small and medium-sized enterprises. The infrastructure and electronics industry are heavy users of the industrial control systems' hardware products and software solutions and are expected to have a direct positive effect.
• Additionally, technologies and terminologies such as process discovery, process optimization, process intelligence, and process orchestration are becoming a more significant part of Robotic Process Automation (RPA). There is an ongoing trend of increasing a closer relationship between business process management (BPM) and RPA in the future.
• Further, different industrial automation systems, such as SCADA, PLCs, and MES on a single physical server, can be easily accessed at a different location on the plant floor using virtual machines. It has been adopted in the country to reduce the overall cost for servers and increase the flexibility in adopting industrial automation systems and software in the process and discrete industries.

Europe Process Automation Industry Overview

The European Process Automation Market is moderately fragmented, with few new entrants and few dominant players. The companies keep on innovating and entering into strategic partnerships to retain their market share. Some of the recent developments in the market are:

• August 2020 - Schneider Electric completes transaction to combine its Low Voltage and Industrial Automation Product business with Larsen & Toubro's Electrical & Automation business.
• May 2020 - OleumTech, wireless industrial automation and IoT solutions provider announced the launch of new intelligent pressure transmitters (HGPT Smart Gauge Pressure Transmitters). These transmitters are an addition to its fast-growing H Series line of hardwired process instrumentation and claimed to deliver remarkable performance, accuracy, and reliability ideal for process industries, such as petrochemical, chemical, power, upstream oil and gas, and wastewater.

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