Disinfectant wipes industry survey report

 Disinfectant wipes industry survey report

Early 2020 saw Wuhan, China to be the attention center of the world due to COVID-19. Although it has been under controlled in China, the epidemic still spreads worldwide. Up 7, 29th, 2020, the number of overseas cumulative confirmed patients reached 16,813,343. Number of current confirmed patients is over 5.7 million and that of the death exceeds 0.65 million. During our fighting against COVID-19 within the last 210 days, great changes have taken place in our life quietly. We are used to wearing face mask and using alcohol, disinfectant, disinfecting gel and some other cleaning and disinfecting products in the public. Our hygiene habits and awareness are also changing continuously.

1. The epidemic strengthens national hygiene awareness and promotes demand on disinfectant wipes.

As data showed, consumption demand on disinfecting and cleaning products increased sharply during the epidemic. Among them, disinfectant wipes sold out for their convenience. And in some e-commerce platforms, goods related to disinfection, sterilization and immunity all sold in a larger amount than before by 267%, 143% and 123% respectively. Although the epidemic has been under control in most part of China, relevant disinfecting products will still ranks in the market demand as people come back to work and school and raise their awareness to hygiene.

SARS in 2003 was a wake-up call for the Chinese people to pay attention to modern public health protection and it was the first time to stimulate the public’s demand on wipes and other hygiene products. After SARS, wet wipe industry even developed by leaps and bounds in the following eight years. It was estimated that wet wipe industry in China developed by 10% annually from 2012 to 2019. The the market value of it in 2019 reached RMB 9.78billion, growing by 13.73% year-on-year.

SARS provided the first stimulation for rapid wet wipe industry development and COVID-19 offers another impetus for its second rapid development. New portable disinfecting products become more popular in the market and it is hopeful that the second rapid wet wipe industry development is coming.

2. Medical disinfectant wipe branches are maturer in abroad than in China.

Nowadays, wet wipes in the market is usually classified into two type: ordinary wet wipe containing skin care ingredients and disinfectant wipes which can disinfect other objects. Disinfectant wipes adopt non-woven, fabric and airlaid paper as carrier and purified water and some disinfectants as raw material. The final products can clean and disinfect. Among all kinds of wet wipes, the requirement and norm on microbial detection for disinfectant wipes is the strictest. Producers should also confirm disinfectant type and additive amount discreetly. Therefore, higher standard is put on producers’ production techniques and production qualification.

Wet wipe market started from some developed countries in North America and Western Europe and spread to developing countries in Asia-Pacific area gradually. And wet wipes were widely applied in medical object disinfection, baby hygiene care and daily family care. Nowadays, the wet wipe market has been stabilized in Europe and America and been ready to boom in Asia-Pacific area. The global market amount of wet wipes was RMB 109.4 billion in 2019 and is estimated to rise to 168.6 billion in 2026 by CAGR of 6.3%.

Medical disinfectant wet wipes, the product of disinfectant wipe industry, is mainly used to disinfectant medical object surface so that they are different from the alcohol disinfectant wipes we used in daily life. Special environment in hospitals makes alcohol not suitable for disinfecting precise instruments in large scale. Therefore, more medical disinfectant wipes contains chlorine, instead of alcohol. Such wipes are widely used in ICU, burns department, isolation room, high-risk department and so on to disinfect operation table surface, ultrasound probe and some other precise instruments. They features high compatibility and convenience.

3. Low usage indicate broad prospect of medical disinfecting wipes

In professional medical institutions such as hospitals, disinfection is an inevitable part of daily work. Improper disinfecting ways might lead to HAIs and even secondary infection and other complications to patients.

In China, lack of awareness, cost limitation and some other reasons result in that disinfecting liquid preparations are still used for object disinfection in most hospitals. There are still problems, for example, liquid might be prepared improperly, liquid volatility might cause low efficacy and disinfectant liquid containing chlorine might harm human health...

On the other hand, medical disinfectant wipes can be thrown away right away after usage to effectively avoid cross contamination. However, medical disinfectant wipes are rarely used in hospitals in China. Only part of hospitals in Grade A Class 3 use disinfectant wipes to disinfect objects. It can be seen that medical disinfectant wipe market is yet not explored well.

Medical disinfectant wipes are actually of wide application. Take COVID-19 as an example. 75% alcohol, ether, chlorine disinfectant and peracetic acid can all kill virus effectively. In hospital or at home, we can dilute them in proper proportion while preparing disinfectants and then disinfect objects with rag. However, personnel professionalism is therefore highly required during the process. Compared with diluted preparation, disinfectant wipes can effectively avoid some misconduct carried out by people. Besides, adhesives of the wipes can help disinfecting liquid to act for a longer time. Normally, chlorine disinfectants can work for about 20min. Direct sunlight will shorten the time. But disinfecting wipes can keep working more than 12 hours. From practical and efficient perspectives, disinfecting wipes adjust itself more to the market demand. In the future, medical system reform will make medical disinfecting wipes to be popularized widely in hospitals.

4. Improving industrial norm will benefit medical disinfecting wipe industry

Recently, a series development plan and national norm are released in China, including The 13th Five Year-Plan for Economic and Social Development of the People’s Republic of China, Made in China 2025 and so on.

Besides, the industry norm keeps being perfected, the government is investing more money of larger proportion into medical health care and medical disinfecting wipe industry is on its way to maturity. Advantages of medical disinfecting wipes allow the wipes to replace disinfecting preparation for object disinfection in hospitals and to be used more widely obviously.

COVID-19 plays a role in not only rousing people’s awareness of the threat of infectious diseases, but also creating opportunities for development and popularization of disinfectant products such as disinfecting wipes. WHO, European countries and China all publicized control guidelines on national epidemic prevention and control. The guidelines all highlights the importance of keeping medical institution, public places and home sanitary and hygiene to control the epidemic. It is no doubt that disinfecting products, including disinfectant wipes, will have great development opportunities, especially that disinfectant wipes will be more widely used in medical institutions in the future and relative producers will have a performance boom as the market develops in higher speed.

Along with the greatly increasing requirement of the disinfectant wipes, the machine to pack the disinfectant wipes , wet tissue, alcohol pad are also increasing, such as the alcohol pad wet tissue packing machine, recently we exported many sets to Russia, USA, India, and Europe, this is also kind of our effort to fight against the virus.