FGI’s 2012 market shipment data is higher than estimated

Study shows 2.3 billion square feet installed

The Fabricated Geomembrane Institute (FGI) conducts an annual survey of its membership’s geomembrane shipments. In a July 15 press release, FGI president, Andrew Mills, said: “The market data study for year 2012 showed that the FGI membership represented (more than) 2.3 billion square feet of installed fabricated geomembranes.”

Tim Stark, FGI technical director, emphasized in his report to FGI members during the Geosynthetics 2013 conference in Long Beach, Calif., “It is important to recognize that this number only includes the shipment data of FGI members who have shared their data for this report. There are non-member producers and several FGI members not represented in this information,” Stark said. “2,300,273,885 square feet actually under-represents the annual market size for fabricated geomembranes.”

The press release noted that the FGI survey data is submitted annually to an accounting firm that tallies the information. The submitters and submissions are kept confidential by the accounting firm.

Mills continued: “This is an exciting confirmation of what we have intuitively believed for some time. FGI members were convinced that the fabricated geomembrane market was much bigger than typically reported but this number is above and beyond our most optimistic estimates. Clearly the market understands the advantages of using fabricated geomembranes.”

The FGI, an industry-sponsored institute affiliated with the University of Illinois at Urban-Champaign, focusses on advancing the use of fabricated geomembranes through education, research, and technology transfer. Dr. Timothy D. Stark is a professor of civil and environmental engineering at UI.

For more information: tstark@illinois.edu, +1 217-333-7394.

Source: FGI