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As electric vehicle production continues to grow, so does the associated demand for the electric steel used in the motors to power them.

The war that Russia has waged on Ukraine has rocked global commodity markets. While oil & gas supply disruption and the resulting increase in price continue to dominate headlines, there are a number of other key materials exported by Russia and Ukraine which have been equally disrupted.

The variable speed drive market is back on track, with 7.7% growth predicted for 2021. Interact Analysis' latest market research offers insight into three important trends influencing the drives market: functional safety, predictive maintenance and efficiency regulations.

The performance of the LV drives market is closely tied to overall global manufacturing output. In "normal" economic crises, manufacturing tends to endure a sharp contraction, followed by a strong rebound before plateauing. But the COVID-19 crisis has gone very differently. Slow vaccine uptake, labor shortages and supply chain disruptions are all coming together to cause a much slower recovery in the manufacturing sector, and therefore in the LV drives sector, than might have been expected.

Predictive maintenance is fast becoming recognized as one of the more easily exploited applications of that popular but not always easily defined concept in industry–digitalization. One aspect of digitalization, however, stands out as worthy of swift and serious consideration: predictive maintenance.