Maintworld Magazine

The global market for gas analysers, sensors and detectors is forecast to grow from $11.35 billion in 2026 to $15.05 billion by 2031. The estimate implies average annual growth of 5.8 per cent. The growth is being driven by industrial safety requirements, process monitoring and tighter emissions controls. ADVERTISEMENT ENDS For maintenance organisations, the market trend reflects a wider shift towards continuous condition and safety monitoring.

US company webAI says its on-device artificial intelligence system reduced documentation-search time during one aircraft engine change from 16 hours to 20 minutes. The reported saving concerns the search for approved technical instructions, not the total time needed to physically replace an engine. The result came from an unnamed European regional maintenance operation and has not been independently verified.

Metso is expanding its service and repair capacity in South America with a new service centre in Minas Gerais, Brazil. The facility is expected to begin operations in the first quarter of 2028 and will support mining customers in one of the country’s most active regions. The company has invested about EUR 45 million in the region over the past two years. ADVERTISEMENT ENDS The new centre will be located near Belo Horizonte, close to major mining operations.

A new Swedish roadmap argues that many panels removed from service should not automatically be treated as waste. Solar power has become one of Sweden’s fastest-growing sources of electricity. The rapid expansion is creating a future challenge for the industry: how to manage the growing flow of panels that are replaced, damaged or decommissioned. ADVERTISEMENT ENDS A Swedish project, CircSolar, is examining how solar panels can remain in use for longer through maintenance, repair and reuse.

Industrial organizations are facing a growing capacity gap as workers lose 41% of their time to manual, repetitive tasks, according to new research from The Futurum Group commissioned by IFS, a leading provider of Industrial AI software. The capacity gap—the widening distance between the work industrial organizations need to do and the actual capacity of their teams—is becoming increasingly costly to ignore.

Wärtsilä and Carnival Corporation (NYSE: CCL), the world’s largest cruise company, have entered into an 8-year Lifecycle Agreement covering four cruise vessels across the Princess Cruises and Carnival Cruise Line fleets, including two newbuild vessels currently under construction. The agreement is the companies’ first service contract to cover Carnival Corporation’s entire fleet of LNG-fuelled cruise ships.

Metso has surpassed 800 connected pieces of equipment under its Data-driven Performance Services, marking a significant expansion of the company’s digital service offering for the mining and minerals processing industry. The number of connected assets has more than doubled since the services were introduced in September 2025.

Sweden-based wave energy developer CorPower Ocean has been awarded the world’s first DNV Prototype Certificate for a Wave Energy Converter (WEC), marking a significant step towards the commercialisation of utility-scale wave energy. The certificate covers the company’s CorPower C4 device and was issued under the DNV-SE-0120 standard for the certification of wave energy converters and arrays.

Epiroc has secured an order from Heidelberg Materials to adapt and implement its LinkOA autonomous haulage system for driverless haul trucks at a quarry in Western Australia. The proof-of-concept project extends the company’s autonomous technology beyond mining into aggregates operations.

SSAB Americas, The Greenbrier Companies and Alter Trading have launched a closed-loop steel recycling initiative in the United States aimed at demonstrating how recycled materials can be returned to the supply chain to produce near-zero emissions steel. The project starts at SSAB’s operations in Iowa, where the company produces its SSAB Zero™ steel using recycled scrap, fossil-free electricity and biogas.