Cleaning wipes market will grow to $3 billion by 2020

The Future of Cleaning Wipes to 2020 states that growth between 2015 and 2020 represents a combination of improving economic conditions in Europe and China, coupled with strong global drivers for cleaning and disinfecting wipes.  The cleaning and disinfecting wipes market is broken down into four sub-segments. Two are consumer wipes and two are industrial wipes. Consumer wipes include, home care cleaning and disinfecting wipes and personal care antibacterial wipes. Industrial wipes include, industrial cleaning and disinfecting wipes and industrial antibacterial wipes.

While growth in cleaning and disinfecting wipes is good in all regions (with projected annual growth ranging from 4.1% to 19.9% through 2020), some regions are still growing slower or have seen growth rates drop dramatically.  Western Europe is slowest growing, though some countries like Germany are growing at above average rates.  Western Europe is also a relatively mature market for cleaning and disinfecting wipes, and second only to North America in sales; eastern Europe is still growing at high rates, but from a small base and growth is projected to only be about one third of what is was for 2010-2015.  Despite China's problems, growth in Asia is healthy and Asia will pass Western Europe for second place in sales in 2020.  North America, the largest consumer of cleaning and disinfecting wipes is a mature market; growth is stable at around 5%.  South America and the rest of the world are still experiencing high growth from a very small base.

The performance of cleaning and disinfecting wipes is significantly affected by the nonwovens used in producing it. Cleaning and disinfecting wipes, like most disposable wipes, are heavily dependent on spunlace nonwovens. Cleaning and disinfecting wipes are 86.6% spunlace based in 2015, by tonnes.  Airlaid is used in personal care antibacterial wipes, but this segment is small and airlaid only accounts for about 9.0% of the total cleaning and disinfecting wipes. Wetlaid and carded each have less than 1% of the market.