According to NANOfutures, the home of the European initiative for sustainable development by Nanotechnologies, “Nanotechnology is the basis for the next industrial revolution. We have several samples of successful business cases e.g. at chemical industry. Nanotechnology is everywhere, in our clothing, cars, windows, computer and displays, even in our cosmetics and medicine adding new functionalities, intelligence, integrations, portability and networking capability in many new products with high market potential. Nanotechnology is the key to markets worth billions of dollars annually. Nanotechnology will help Europe to address global challenges such as climate change, constraints in energy production and shortage of resources, insufficient access to clean water and food safety, as well as widespread diseases and affordable health care worldwide. However, the true potential of nanotechnology is not yet exploited exhaustively. To overcome this and ensure that Europe will not stay behind in the global competition, NANOfutures will bring together industry, research, networks NGO’s at all levels for a joint movement towards a new industry.”

INDUSTRY FORECASTS

Dr Barry Park, Theme Manager, Chemicals and Consumer Products division of the UK’s Nano Knowledge Transfer Network, quoted in UK Nanotechnology Directory 2010 December edition states that:-
• “The value of nanotechnology in food processing had a worldwide market value in 2008 of $4.13B rising to $7.3B by 2014”
• “The world market for intermediates from coatings to display components enabled by nano-materials will grow from $29B in 2010 to $498B in 2015 with coatings leading the growth in intermediates and projected to reach $20B in 2015”
• A further report noted that:-
• “the nano-coatings market will be worth $5B by 2013”

OTHER PREDICTIONS

• The National Science Foundation projects that nanotechnology will constitute a $1–trillion-a-year megamarket by 2015.
• Projected annual growth rate of 900% to reach $2.6 trillion of manufactured goods in 2014.
• Nanotechnology users will exceed 250 million households within the next 5 years.
• Rapidly growing demand due to unlimited possible applications for surfaces.
• 5 million business users forecast within 2 years.
• Total global revenue on Nanotechnology reached $25 billion 2009.
• The global nanotechnology market in 2002 stood at about $7 billion, roughly comparable in size to the biotechnology sector, but far smaller than the $800 billion global informatics market. Today, the nanotechnology market is growing more than twice as fast as either of the other two.