India’s significant advantage

At the forthcoming EDANA Outlook personal care conference which takes place in Budapest, Hungary, from September 28-30th, Samir Gupta of BCH will chart the anticipated boom in the Indian market for personal hygiene products – to which sustainability could prove critical.

Hygienic disposables are currently the biggest market for nonwovens in the world and this market is now worth an annual €25 billion.

In 2011, there will be some 135 billion individual baby diapers sold.

Yet at the same time, only one in every five babies currently uses disposable diapers.

In 2011 there are 322 million babies from newborn to 30 months old in 2011. By 2025 there will be 328 million.

If every baby in the world used diapers today in 2011 – even on a minimal level – it is estimated that around 16,000 would have to be produced every second. The usage would be 490 billion per year.
That’s quite a market.

To predict what is likely to happen in India in the next few years as far as the disposable baby diaper market is concerned, it’s possible to look to China – although the two nations are very different in many ways.