Cleaning Product Market in Brazil
Brazilians are the largest consumers of cleaning products in Latin America spending an average of BRL 271,68 per year. According to Sebrae, an institution supporting the development of small and micro companies, Brazil has the fourth largest market in the word for cleaning products after the United States, China and Japan.
According to data recently released by Abipla, short for Brazilian Association of Cleaning Products and Related Industries, the consumption of cleaning products has increased 56% over the last five years. The region that consumes the most of these products is the Central West. Currently, personal hygiene and cleaning products correspond to 8.6% of the total Brazilian consumption. National cleaning products from the domestic market are the most popular, while imported products represent 8,2% of the total consumption.
As for the distribution channels of cleaning products, supermarkets correspond to 72% of sales and the retail sector, composed of small markets and groceries represents 28% of sales.
In Brazil, all cleaning products must be registered with the National Health Surveillance Agency, known as ANVISA, and the Ministry of Health, which is also responsible for the regulation and supervision of this sector. In addition, companies that produce, import, sell, transport or distribute cleaning products must have authorization from these agencies to operate.
The cleaning products market has an annual revenue of USD 7.8 billion. About 95% of sales are destined to the domestic market and 5% for export, which has revenue of USD 305 million.
Cleaning Product Sales
Brazilians are buying more cleaning products and prefer bigger packages that last longer. The expansion of the middle classes benefits the manufacturers of consumer goods in general, including the cleaning product market. In addition to this factor the advancement of women's participation in the labor market and the higher costs to hire a maid, increase the consumption of cleaning products that offer more practicality, such as degreasers and stain removers.
According to Nielsen Research Institute, some products that were historically hardly ever used have also increased in sales, such as cleaning concentrates which have increased by 4.1% and bleach which has increased by 3.9%.
Sales of cleaning cloths grew 31.5% in 2014, while air fresheners, which are also considered a superfluous cleaning product, grew 19.1%.
Nielsen data also shows that steel wool, bar soap and floor wax decreased by 9.3%, 9.1% and 7.3% respectively. The sales of these products has decreased due to their lack of practicality.
A curious thing about Brazilians household cleaning habits is that they use alcohol to clean everything. The sale of this product in gel version grew after the outbreak of influenza A in 2009. Using alcohol gel for hand hygiene and avoiding contamination of the H1N1 virus almost became an obsession.
There was a lack of this product on the shelves because manufacturers could not meet the demand, which grew by 300%. There were even those who took advantage of the situation to sell products that were not effective against the virus. What most people do not know is that if the alcohol gel has less than 70% of alcoholic solution in the formula, it is pointless buying it.
Liquid laundry soap generates revenue of BRL 5 billion to the cleaning products market and the consumption per capita is 5 kg per year. Over the past five years, the use of liquid soap in Brazil increased from 6.5% to 29.1%.
Therewith, companies of all sizes started to invest in this category. Omo, brand of the multinational Unilever is one of the most popular due to its liquid version of laundry soap. Unilever and P&G led liquid soap sales and today are followed by companies such as Química Amparo, Util Química, Scarlat and others.
Cleaning Product Producers
The Anglo-Dutch Unilever leads the cleaning market, although it has a lost market share over the past two years, down from 24.6% to 23.2%, according to research company Euromonitor. In 2015, Unilever made an investment of BRL 50 million to expand the variety of cleaning products and launched 20 products under the brand such as Vim and Cif.
The British company Reckitt Benckiser has the second largest market share, representing 12.8%, followed by the Brazilian companies Chemical Amparo, with 11.3%, and Bombril with 6.6% of market share.