Report Highlights

Understanding the escalators and moving walkway market: A Buyer's Overview

The escalators and moving walkway market delivers vertical and horizontal people-movement solutions primarily to airports, metro and rail transit systems, shopping centres, hotels, hospitals, and large commercial office complexes. Primary buyers are infrastructure developers, transit authorities, airport operators, and commercial real estate owners, all of whom treat escalators and walkways as long-lived capital assets rather than commodities. The total cost of ownership — including energy consumption, maintenance, and eventual modernisation — routinely exceeds initial purchase price by a factor of three or more over a 20-year operational life, making procurement decisions financially significant beyond the capex line.

From a procurement perspective, the market is highly concentrated. Four manufacturers — KONE, Otis, Schindler, and Thyssenkrupp Elevator — control an estimated 70% of global new-equipment revenue. Mitsubishi Electric, Fujitec, and Hyundai Elevator hold meaningful share in Asia-Pacific. Tender processes for large public transit projects are competitive but often functionally limited to two or three qualified bidders with relevant reference installations at comparable scale. Contract structures typically bundle equipment supply with 5-to-10-year maintenance agreements, and pricing models are shifting toward performance-based service arrangements that tie fees to uptime guarantees rather than time-and-materials schedules.

Factors Driving escalator and moving walkway procurement

Three specific triggers are pushing organisations to increase procurement spending right now. First, urban transit infrastructure investment is accelerating in Southeast Asia and the Middle East, with projects such as Riyadh Metro Phase 2 expansions and Jakarta MRT Line 3 driving large-volume escalator procurement cycles through 2027. These are not discretionary upgrades — they are committed capital programmes with mandatory delivery timelines attached to government funding disbursements. Second, ageing installed base replacement in North America and Western Europe is creating a parallel replacement cycle. Escalators installed in the 1990s in US and UK transit systems are reaching end of mechanical life, and authorities including the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority and Transport for London have active multi-year replacement programmes underway.

Third, tightening energy efficiency regulations in the European Union — specifically the Ecodesign Regulation framework and forthcoming escalator-specific standby power requirements — are compelling building owners to replace older variable-frequency-drive-deficient units before mandatory compliance deadlines in 2026 and 2027. This is not a voluntary sustainability initiative; it is a regulatory enforcement timeline with penalty exposure. Airport operators are simultaneously under pressure from LEED and BREEAM certification requirements that score building systems efficiency, adding a commercial incentive on top of the regulatory mandate for new escalator procurement with regenerative drive technology and sleep-mode standby capability.

Challenges Buyers Face in the escalator and moving walkway market

Vendor lock-in through proprietary remote monitoring platforms is the single most operationally consequential challenge buyers face. KONE's 24/7 Connected Services and Otis's OtisONE system collect real-time performance data via embedded IoT sensors but restrict data access behind proprietary APIs. Buyers who accept these systems without negotiating data portability rights find themselves structurally dependent on the OEM for maintenance contracting at renewal — a position that eliminates competitive tendering for servicing and inflates lifecycle costs significantly. This is not widely flagged during initial equipment procurement and catches many facility managers by surprise at the five-year service contract renewal point.

Lead time risk and supply chain fragility present a second material challenge. Escalator step chains, handrail drive systems, and safety controllers are sourced from a small number of specialist sub-suppliers, several concentrated in Germany and Japan. Post-pandemic lead times for critical spare parts extended to 18–24 weeks for some components, causing prolonged unit outages in transit environments where downtime directly affects passenger flow and attracts regulatory scrutiny. Buyers managing large transit fleets who did not negotiate minimum spares stockholding obligations into their service contracts paid premium expediting costs. Total cost of ownership modelling that fails to account for extended downtime costs underestimates true procurement risk in this category by a meaningful margin.

Emerging Opportunities Worth Watching in escalators and moving walkways

Three developments merit close attention from forward-looking buyers. The most immediately actionable is the emergence of outcome-based maintenance contracting — specifically uptime-guaranteed service models where the OEM bears financial risk for availability below a defined threshold. Schindler's Ahead platform and KONE's predictive maintenance offering are moving in this direction, and buyers who engage now during platform rollout have better leverage to negotiate favourable SLA terms than they will once these models become standard. A second development is the entry of Chinese manufacturers — particularly CANNY Elevator and Yungtay Engineering — into European and Middle Eastern project markets with pricing 15–25% below Western OEM benchmarks, creating genuine competitive tension in tender processes that previously had limited participation.

The third opportunity is modular escalator design, currently being piloted by Thyssenkrupp Elevator under its MAX platform. Modular units with standardised drive and control components reduce both installation time and long-term parts dependency, addressing two of the most persistent buyer pain points simultaneously. For buyers planning new airport or transit infrastructure over the next two to three years, specifying modular-compatible designs in tender documents now locks in the flexibility to diversify maintenance providers later. This structural shift in product architecture has the potential to meaningfully reduce vendor lock-in risk, but only for buyers who understand the specification differences and write them into procurement requirements proactively.

How to Evaluate escalator and moving walkway suppliers

The three most critical evaluation criteria for this market are reference installation comparability, data access architecture, and parts supply chain independence. Reference installations must be assessed at equivalent scale and duty cycle — an OEM with strong shopping centre references is not automatically qualified for a heavy-duty transit environment running 20 hours per day at high passenger density. Buyers should require certified performance data from installations of matching classification, not marketing references. Data access architecture must be evaluated contractually, not just technically: buyers should obtain a written commitment to open API data export before award, not as a post-signature negotiation. Parts supply chain independence should be tested by asking suppliers to identify their top five sub-component sources and their stockholding commitments for the contract term.

The most common evaluation mistake buyers make in this market is over-weighting initial capital price relative to 15-year total cost of ownership. Suppliers who win on price frequently recover margin through proprietary parts pricing and elevated service contract fees at renewal. A second critical mistake is failing to evaluate service organisation depth independently from equipment quality — an OEM may manufacture excellent equipment but operate a thin field service network in the buyer's geography, resulting in unacceptably long response times. Buyers should require documentation of certified field technician headcount and average response time data within their specific region, not company-wide averages. The supplier that looks most capable on paper at tender stage frequently underdelivers on maintenance response when the installed base grows and field resources are stretched across a larger service territory.

Market at a Glance

Regional Demand: Where escalator and moving walkway buyers are

Asia Pacific is the dominant demand region and the most active procurement market, accounting for the majority of new escalator installations globally. China alone drives over half of world volume, supported by continued metro network expansion in cities including Chengdu, Wuhan, and Shenzhen, where municipal transit authorities are active buyers through long-term framework agreements. India is the fastest-growing sub-market within the region, with Delhi Metro Phase 4, Mumbai Metro extensions, and a rapidly expanding commercial real estate sector in Bengaluru and Hyderabad generating substantial new-equipment demand. Southeast Asian airports — particularly in Indonesia, Vietnam, and the Philippines — are executing terminal expansion programmes that include significant moving walkway procurement through 2028.

North America represents the most active replacement and modernisation market, with transit authorities in New York, Washington DC, and Chicago operating large ageing escalator fleets and facing both regulatory pressure and public accountability for unit availability. The US market favours established OEMs with proven Buy America Act compliance pathways for federally funded transit projects, which effectively limits competitive participation for Chinese entrants. Europe is a mature market with procurement driven largely by building regulation compliance, urban transit modernisation, and airport expansion in Germany, France, and the Netherlands. The Middle East is a high-growth region for both new installations and moving walkways, with Riyadh, Dubai, and Doha transit and airport projects representing some of the largest single-contract escalator procurement opportunities globally over the next five years.

Leading Market Participants

• KONE Corporation
• Otis Worldwide Corporation
• Schindler Group
• Thyssenkrupp Elevator AG
• Mitsubishi Electric Corporation
• Fujitec Co., Ltd.
• Hyundai Elevator Co., Ltd.
• CANNY Elevator Co., Ltd.
• Yungtay Engineering Co., Ltd.
• Hitachi Building Systems Co., Ltd.

What Comes Next for escalators and moving walkways

Over the next three to five years, three structural changes will reshape procurement conditions in this market. Supplier consolidation is accelerating — Thyssenkrupp Elevator's sale to an Advent International-led consortium and ongoing portfolio rationalisation across major OEMs signal that the competitive landscape will narrow further, reducing buyer leverage in markets where only two or three qualified suppliers participate in tenders. Simultaneously, digital twin integration is moving from pilot to standard specification in major transit procurements, with authorities including Singapore's Land Transport Authority and Transport for London beginning to require BIM-compatible digital asset handover as a contract deliverable, which favours OEMs with mature digital platform capabilities over lower-cost competitors.

The practical implication for buyers planning procurements in the 2025–2028 window is to build contractual flexibility into agreements now rather than accepting standard OEM terms. Specifically, buyers should include step-in rights for third-party maintenance after year five, open-protocol monitoring specifications, and indexed parts pricing caps in all new contracts. Buyers who lock into 10-year full-service agreements under current OEM standard terms without these provisions will face significant renewal leverage disadvantages as market consolidation reduces competitive alternatives. Engaging an independent technical advisor to review contract terms before signature — particularly on digital data access and parts supply obligations — delivers disproportionate value relative to its cost for any procurement above USD 5 million in total contract value.