What are the materials of the future to invest in?

Pieter Busscher, senior portfolio manager at RobecoSAM, explores how new matierlais including carbon fibres are helping to boost the automation space and robotics into a new era

The automation market has been growing by 6%-8% per year since 2003, reaching $195bn in 2015. But this is just the beginning. We see a wide range of investment opportunities as cost savings, product quality and uniformity, faster production cycles and better resource efficiency continue to drive adoption of automation. Trends such as the increasing use of software across manufacturing and 3D-printing offer additional opportunities for investors. In particular, three key long-term structural trends suggest we are only at the beginning of a decades-long adoption cycle. These are risi...