Wipes in Costa Rica

PRE-COVID-19 PERFORMANCE

While all purpose cleaning wipes and baby wipes see the highest growth, intimate and facial cleaning wipes keep gaining traction in 2019

Both baby and other personal wipes are popular items in the Costa Rican market and consumers were showing more interest in wipes that they perceived to be healthier or gentler on skin in 2019. This was particularly the case with baby wipes, but was also increasingly seen with intimate and facial cleansing wipes.

Costa Ricans show greater interest in organic and scent-free personal wipes and in eco-friendly wipes in 2019

More and more, consumers are concerned about ingredients used in wipes and players are revising labels thoroughly in response. Consumers are interested in more organic ingredients and are even opting for softer fragrances or products entirely free of perfume or added fragrances, especially in the case of baby wipes.

While Kimberly-Clark’s Huggies maintains its lead in wipes overall due to its strength in baby wipes, Procter & Gamble’s Pampers wipes rapidly gain ground in 2019

Established international players continued to dominate the competitive landscape in wipes in 2019, with Kimberly-Clark retaining its lead on the strength of its Huggies brand of baby wipes, which are often used for multiple personal cleaning and freshening purposes. Huggies remains an established, trusted name among consumers and its strong presence in the nappies/diapers/pants category has had favourable spillover effects into baby wipes of the same name.

2020 AND BEYOND

COVID-19 impact

Value sales of wipes are now expected to grow by 5% in 2019 constant value terms in 2020 overall in light of the impact of COVID-19. This is in line with the 5% rise forecast in 2019 constant value terms in our 2020 edition of tissue and hygiene published in February 2020 (pre-COVID-19).

Affected products within wipes

As previously mentioned, COVID-19 has driven greater demand and value growth for all-purpose cleaning wipes in 2020 as people are highly conscious of the need for extra diligence in keeping especially frequently used surfaces disinfected and otherwise very clean. These wipes also benefited during the early stages of the pandemic when available supplies of alcohol-based hand sanitizers failed to keep up with demand and consumers began turning to these wipes as an alternative.

Recovery and opportunities

While all purpose cleaning wipes, and to a lesser degree baby wipes, saw impressive sales growth directly resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic thanks to a spike in demand during the first part of 2020, both categories are expected to continue seeing strong growth going forwards. Baby wipes have always been popular, and all-purpose cleaning wipes will especially benefit from consumers having placed greater trust in the ability of these products to quickly wipe down and disinfect an area to reduce the probability of virus transmission.

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