Retail Tissue in Australia

2021 DEVELOPMENTS

AFH tissue demand migrates into the home

A large proportion of Australian workers – major exceptions being those in the essential services and manufacturing – were required to work from home during the COVID-19 pandemic. This meant that activities that would otherwise have taken place in the workplace, took place within the confines of the home, and consumption that would previously have been tracked within the AFH channel transferred to retail.

Fewer opportunities to leave the house mean fewer usage occasions for facial tissues

With Australians spending far less time outside the home in 2020 and 2021, and with far fewer face-to-face social interactions, colds, flu and runny noses became less common. Cases of influenza, for example, virtually disappeared as soon as the first lockdown of 2020 was announced, and have rarely been seen since.

Who Gives A Crap? and bamboo reinvigorate eco toilet paper

Green (or eco) tissue products have always struggled in Australia, as the category has long competed almost solely on softness properties, which recycled tissue products such as toilet paper have typically been perceived as being unable to offer. Brands such as iCare by Encore and Naturale by ABC Tissue have struggled to gain more than a couple of percentage points of value share.

PROSPECTS AND OPPORTUNITIES

Australians’ lives might be returning to normal, but retail tissue is not

How Australians will react to their post-pandemic freedoms – whether they will return to work, to foodservice, to bricks-and-mortar retail, or whether they will continue to nest at home and shop online – is one of the great unknowns. The most likely scenario is that those consumers who have been working from home will return to the office at least a couple of days a week, thereby transferring some of the demand for retail tissue, particularly toilet paper, back towards the AFH channel.

It may finally be time for eco toilet paper to go mainstream

Eco brands, which have long been only niche products in Australia, made significant gains in 2020 and 2021, at least partly due to consumers’ simultaneous embrace of e-commerce. Brands that adopted an online subscription model, such as Who Gives A Crap? performed particularly well, as consumers were home to receive deliveries.

Will Australia finally embrace the bidet?

Whilst demand for retail toilet paper will remain high, as many Australians continue to work and otherwise spend more time at home, one countering trend might soften demand. The toilet paper shortage during the pandemic – or at least the fear of toilet paper shortages – inspired many households to install a bidet.