Liquid Handling Systems Market (2022-2029)

Liquid handling systems include a class of devices used in the various liquid handling tasks in laboratories. Liquid handling is the process of transferring liquids from one container to another. It can be done either manually, automatically or semi-automatically. Some of the liquid handling systems include pipettes and micropipettes, disposable tips, washers, microtiter plate reagent dispensers, stackers, handlers, burettes, and others. Liquid handling is a crucial practice in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry and research institutes.

The growth of this market is driven by factors such as rapid growth and expansion of the pharmaceutical & biotechnology industry, increasing R&D expenditure of biopharmaceutical companies, rapid adoption of automation in laboratories, and growing demand for high-throughput screening. In addition, emerging economies and growing genomics and proteomics research are expected to provide significant growth opportunities for this market.

However, the high costs of automated liquid handling systems are restraining the growth of this market to a notable extent. In addition, the slow adoption of automation among small & medium-sized laboratories and additional training required by the laboratory personnel for operating automated robotic liquid handling workstations are the major challenges to the growth of this market.

The outbreak of COVID-19 in March 2020 led to a global economic crisis. According to the International Monetary Fund, the global GDP contracted by about 3.5 percent in 2020. By 2021, the economy started to recover as the pandemic subsided. The effects of economic shrinkage have negatively impacted the purchase of new liquid handling systems. Additionally, there was a short-term negative impact due to the stringent lockdowns and restrictions, which led to supply chain disruptions.

However, the demand for liquid handling systems grew significantly during the pandemic. There was an urgent need to analyze a large volume of virus samples. Due to this, there was an increased demand from laboratories to meet the demand for high-throughput and large-scale testing. Furthermore, the race to develop new COVID-19 vaccines boosted the demand for advanced automated liquid handling systems.

Thus, the pandemic had a short-term negative impact on the liquid handling systems market, while ultimately, there was a higher demand for liquid handling systems.

Liquid handling systems are crucial in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries, especially in research and development. Pharmaceutical companies constantly focus on R&D as it is a core aspect of drug development processes. The biotechnology industry also continues to witness substantial growth due to increased investments in R&D to cater to the growing demand for innovation and new medical breakthroughs. The importance of R&D is evident due to the rising number of drug approvals. For instance, in 2021, the FDA’s Center [SJ1] for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER) approved 50 novel drugs, compared to 45 novel drugs approved in 2015. High R&D investments in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries are thus expected to drive the growth of the liquid handling systems market due to the importance of drug discovery.

In clinical genomic laboratories, the sample preparation process is the most critical step of the genomic experiments. Hence, there is an increased demand for liquid-handling automation to make the sequencing workflow more efficient and cost-effective. Automation of liquid handling improves the performance of high-throughput laboratories in a cost-effective manner. Large genomic laboratories are adopting advanced robotic liquid-handling workstations to boost their productivity.

Since the process of liquid filling, dispensing, mixing and transferring are highly important in genomics research, there is a great opportunity for liquid-handling systems in genomics research to reduce costs and improve the efficiency of sequencing.