subject: Pressure Cleaners - What Is The Current State Of The Industry [print this page] Pressure cleaners, also known as steam cleaners, waterblasters, is an area of technology which has been dominated by the Italians with a strong manufacturing industry supporting this product category.
Some time ago, around 60 manufacturers of pressure cleaners existed in Italy which is the largest manufacturer in the world by far. It is only very recently that China has really entered this industry and now have many more different companies manufacturing pressure cleaners but they are almost all manufacturing clone copy machines of pressure cleaners from Italy.
While China has entered the pressure cleaner market quickly, the quality of the manufacturing process as well as the materials used are not the same as used in Italy.
China have made a particularly large entry into the petrol powered pressure cleaner market, especially cloning motors such as Honda. With the massive price advantage that the developing Chinese market has, the machines in various sizes and performance ranges have made a high performing pressure cleaner a very affordable option to the small electric pressure cleaners which cannot match the performance of the gasoline/petrol units.
The Chinese market has produced a number of small electric cold water pressure cleaners with varying levels of success in relation to reliability but the foray into Hot Water pressure cleaners has been much more limited. The Hot Water pressure cleaner which basically heats it's own water in the unit after it has been pressurized, is a much more complicated unit than the much simpler, less complex cold water pressure cleaner. When the quality of the steel improves and the quality control process in manufacturing improves, the Chinese will quickly become large manufacturers of hot water pressure cleaners.
The pressure cleaner industry worldwide is not as collectively organised compared to the motor car industry, leaving very little statistical data in relation to market share or joint manufacturing research and development.The larger companies are concerned about sharing technologies and sales figures, therefore have no immediate want for an all encompassing body.
The other difficulty with obtaining statistics from the different companies is that not all of them concentrate on the same markets in the pressure cleaner industry.Some focus solely on the small domestic markets with electric cleaners, others on the industrial markets with large petrol machines while the main companies manufacture machines for all types of markets.
Domestic or hobby machines make up most of the market, especially in Australia based on number of sales alone. This could also be similar around the world, although as noted above, there are no statistical evidence to prove this.
