10.11.21
South Africa is Africa’s second largest market as well as the largest market in Sub-Saharan Africa. Currently, the number one and two players in the absorbent hygiene industry—Procter & Gamble and Kimberly-Clark, have established businesses in South Africa. Additionally, the number three player, National Pride, a part of the investment company Lodestone Brands, manufactures the Cuddlers and National Pride diaper brands.
It is no wonder PFNonwovens, the largest producer of spunmelt nonwovens in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, chose to construct a plant here in Cape Town in 2017, at a cost of about $100 million. While this plant was PFNonwovens’s first in Sub-Saharan Africa, it was its second on the African continent. The company already has an operation in Egypt.
In addition to PFNonwovens, Spunchem has local manufacturing capabilities in South Africa. While Spunchem has been in the South African nonwovens market for the past 20 years, it has historically been focused on the industrial side of nonwovens. Realizing the growth of the absorbent hygiene sector, in 2018 Spunchem increased its capacity for hygiene applications and began working with a top tier local baby diaper manufacturer to try raw material products aimed at the hygiene sector. Spunchem was also one of the few suppliers of meltblown able to supply its local markets with face mask material during the Coronavirus pandemic.
Freudenberg Performance Materials operates two sales offices in Cape Town and Johannesburg, but has no local manufacturing capability. Paul Hartmann is also very active in the medical supplies and absorbent hygiene supply of nonwovens, but with no local manufacturing either. MoliCare is a recognizable brand in the adult incontinence space in the South African market through pharmacy channels, modern retail and online. V&G Personal Products manufacture Lilets, Nina Femme and Eva brands. Another global player that is present in the South African nonwovens market is Fibertex Nonwovens, located near Durban and whose key areas are automotive, bedding, filtration, furniture and geotextiles.
After selling National Pride, Ebrahim Kara went on to build another hygiene company, several years later, called Infinity Care, which manufactures baby diapers, adult diapers and wet wipes. Other notable players in the South African hygiene market are Cleopatra Products based in Durban and L’il Masters based in Johannesburg. Both of these family-owned businesses have done very well in their own right, taking their space in the private label and own brands space in South Africa’s absorbent hygiene market, based on their very strong quality control departments.
Other significant players in the South African market include NSP Unsgaard, which is based in Cape Town and part of Lion Match Company. NSP Unsgaard is the market leader in panty liners and also has a value-priced sanitary pads brand called Comfitex, which has been chipping away at the marketshare. NSP Unsgaard has been increasing its manufacturing capacity in recent years including a R20 million investment to increase manufacturing capacity by 55% in 2018, which wasis part of a broader R100 million investment plan that started in 2016. According to Retail Brief Africa, South Africa’s panty liner market is growing at 9-10% a year in volume.
Unsgaard has also been gradually building its export capacity within the SADC region and is working to replicate the success of its panty liner business with sanitary pads. T
Twinsaver Group has adult and baby diaper brands as well as wet wipes brands. Through acquisitions, Twinsaver group has honed its specialization in the wipes space, coming up with all sorts of wipes offerings from waterless bath, hygienic wipes and various other wet wipes offerings that strengthen their position in this sector.
L’il Masters Buys Infinity Care
In an interesting development, L’il Masters has acquired Infinity Care. With this acquisition, L’il Masters now has seven baby diaper lines, one adult diaper line, one baby pants line, one sanitary pads line and four wet wipes lines in three operating sites—two in Johannesburg and one in Durban. According to the CEO, Preyesh Bhawan, in 2022 the business has plans to acquire another two baby diaper lines. With more than a decade of experience, this family business is the largest hygiene manufacturer in South Africa and this move places them at a clear number three position after P&G and K-C.
L’il Masters’ roots extended from a company called Sapphire Wet Wipes Manufacturers Pty Ltd which was established in 2002 and specialized in baby accessories and wet wipes. In the past 17 years, the company has radically grown and given rise to L’il Masters Diapers, a company that specializes in the manufacturing of baby diapers and wet wipes and now adult diapers. L’il Masters moved into a bigger state-of-the-art 16,000 square metres facility in Vereeniging. and has a plant in Durban.
L’il Masters Diapers started operations with one baby diaper and one wet wipes machine and added a second line in 2011 to meet growing demand. Currently continuously operates five diaper lines, which produce 28 million diapers per month, and two wet wipes wipes machines. Private label customers include Jet, Clicks, Dischem and the Massmart Group. Each of the private label OEM brands have different features and key indicators. According to the CEO of L’il Masters, these diapers are of high quality and can easily be benchmarked against the international brands. L’il Masters’ exports markets include Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Mozambique, Swaziland (Eswatini), Lesotho and Madagascar.
The business gives back to the community in various programs and has robust sustainability programs in place. They have 700 solar panels installed at their new head office, making it the only diaper manufacturer have a power efficient facility to this level and that leverages sustainable energy options for its factories in South Africa. Other carbon offsetting projects in the business include water saving, paperless invoicing and water cooling systems. Waste and dust extraction units have also been installed in the building to minimize the environmental impact. Plastic and cardboard waste is collected daily for recycling, by the waste management companies that the business works with.
Sector Challenges
The absorbent hygiene sector in South Africa has faced challenges in recent times. Some are related to the damage that plastic-based products cause to the environment when they find their way to rivers and oceans in South Africa.
More pressure is coming to the industry. Environmental lobby groups and communities are all calling for solutions and they are putting the Department of Environmental Affairs as well as municipalities under pressure to force the brand owners and manufacturers to take responsibility for the pollution caused by used diapers and sanitary pads in communities, water systems, beaches and the general environment.
This challenge is also common in the rest of the continent and used diapers are some of the products found blocking cities’ rainwater drainage system, causing city flooding and other challenges during the rainy season. To make matters worse, municipalities across the country in South Africa are not coping with the urban growth rate. Municipal budgets are under pressure and household waste is not collected regularly, causing service delivery protests from communities that are annoyed by general litter that includes used diapers and feminine hygiene products being thrown around the neighborhoods by pets.
The service delivery issues blur the lines between where the brand owners’ responsibilities start and the normal basic municipal service delivery.
It also does not help that there is not enough trust between the brand owners and manufacturers, the bigger global brand owners and the smaller independent family owned AHP brand owners. Owing to the lack of trust, the industry is unable to come together as one body to address the challenges facing them. As an industry they have made several attempts to come together but without success so far. Interestingly, though, other industries such as the food and beverage have successfully come together with other brand owners and other stakeholders such as communities, retailers, and others to form several organizations focused on the recovery and recycling of plastics, such as Petco, the PET Recycling company, Polyco, SA Plastics Pact and several others, which bring together recyclers, retailers, brand owners, converters, national government, raw material producers, academia and consumers. Even the glass industry in South Africa has made good headway that the AHP sector can learn from.
Effects of the Pandemic
Owing to disruptions that the pandemic has caused to the global inventories and supply of containers and the shipping routes, freight rates have increased significantly and in some cases more than doubled. This has meant that there is a significant rise in the cost of imported raw materials of AHPs. Christmas is around the corner and demand for shipments to fulfill Christmas orders will not allow the freight rates to come down.
China is one of the key supply points for products like artificial Christmas trees and toys. Add the fact that soon after Christmas season the Chinese New Year is also in the cards, these factors will almost guarantee that the freight rates will not subside anytime soon.
With China out of the picture as a supplier, the local nonwoven suppliers like Spunchem have become even more powerful. Fortunately for them, they also have the government’s support, who is one of the biggest buyers of face masks and in their purchasing process, insists that the local companies that they buy from must prove that their supply of raw materials and other inputs is local. This point also emphasizes even more the need for local supply of nonwoven raw materials for the hygiene industry.
To this end, PFNonwovens is currently expanded its manufacturing facility in Cape Town with another $40 million investment that will create 40 new jobs. The first company to invest in the latest Reicofil R5 machinery in South Africa, this investment reinforces PFNonwovens as the market leader in spunmelt for the hygiene sector.
As a result of the investment, the company “will have the capacity to meet the growing local market needs for high value and specialty products with increasing levels of softness, comfort and sustainability,” according to the company. The Western Cape was chosen for this expansion because of its world class infrastructure and access to the rest of the continent.
It will be interesting to see what will happen in the short to medium term as L’il Masters and National Pride compete for the position of the third biggest player in the South African market.
It is no wonder PFNonwovens, the largest producer of spunmelt nonwovens in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, chose to construct a plant here in Cape Town in 2017, at a cost of about $100 million. While this plant was PFNonwovens’s first in Sub-Saharan Africa, it was its second on the African continent. The company already has an operation in Egypt.
In addition to PFNonwovens, Spunchem has local manufacturing capabilities in South Africa. While Spunchem has been in the South African nonwovens market for the past 20 years, it has historically been focused on the industrial side of nonwovens. Realizing the growth of the absorbent hygiene sector, in 2018 Spunchem increased its capacity for hygiene applications and began working with a top tier local baby diaper manufacturer to try raw material products aimed at the hygiene sector. Spunchem was also one of the few suppliers of meltblown able to supply its local markets with face mask material during the Coronavirus pandemic.
Freudenberg Performance Materials operates two sales offices in Cape Town and Johannesburg, but has no local manufacturing capability. Paul Hartmann is also very active in the medical supplies and absorbent hygiene supply of nonwovens, but with no local manufacturing either. MoliCare is a recognizable brand in the adult incontinence space in the South African market through pharmacy channels, modern retail and online. V&G Personal Products manufacture Lilets, Nina Femme and Eva brands. Another global player that is present in the South African nonwovens market is Fibertex Nonwovens, located near Durban and whose key areas are automotive, bedding, filtration, furniture and geotextiles.
After selling National Pride, Ebrahim Kara went on to build another hygiene company, several years later, called Infinity Care, which manufactures baby diapers, adult diapers and wet wipes. Other notable players in the South African hygiene market are Cleopatra Products based in Durban and L’il Masters based in Johannesburg. Both of these family-owned businesses have done very well in their own right, taking their space in the private label and own brands space in South Africa’s absorbent hygiene market, based on their very strong quality control departments.
Other significant players in the South African market include NSP Unsgaard, which is based in Cape Town and part of Lion Match Company. NSP Unsgaard is the market leader in panty liners and also has a value-priced sanitary pads brand called Comfitex, which has been chipping away at the marketshare. NSP Unsgaard has been increasing its manufacturing capacity in recent years including a R20 million investment to increase manufacturing capacity by 55% in 2018, which wasis part of a broader R100 million investment plan that started in 2016. According to Retail Brief Africa, South Africa’s panty liner market is growing at 9-10% a year in volume.
Unsgaard has also been gradually building its export capacity within the SADC region and is working to replicate the success of its panty liner business with sanitary pads. T
Twinsaver Group has adult and baby diaper brands as well as wet wipes brands. Through acquisitions, Twinsaver group has honed its specialization in the wipes space, coming up with all sorts of wipes offerings from waterless bath, hygienic wipes and various other wet wipes offerings that strengthen their position in this sector.
L’il Masters Buys Infinity Care
In an interesting development, L’il Masters has acquired Infinity Care. With this acquisition, L’il Masters now has seven baby diaper lines, one adult diaper line, one baby pants line, one sanitary pads line and four wet wipes lines in three operating sites—two in Johannesburg and one in Durban. According to the CEO, Preyesh Bhawan, in 2022 the business has plans to acquire another two baby diaper lines. With more than a decade of experience, this family business is the largest hygiene manufacturer in South Africa and this move places them at a clear number three position after P&G and K-C.
L’il Masters’ roots extended from a company called Sapphire Wet Wipes Manufacturers Pty Ltd which was established in 2002 and specialized in baby accessories and wet wipes. In the past 17 years, the company has radically grown and given rise to L’il Masters Diapers, a company that specializes in the manufacturing of baby diapers and wet wipes and now adult diapers. L’il Masters moved into a bigger state-of-the-art 16,000 square metres facility in Vereeniging. and has a plant in Durban.
L’il Masters Diapers started operations with one baby diaper and one wet wipes machine and added a second line in 2011 to meet growing demand. Currently continuously operates five diaper lines, which produce 28 million diapers per month, and two wet wipes wipes machines. Private label customers include Jet, Clicks, Dischem and the Massmart Group. Each of the private label OEM brands have different features and key indicators. According to the CEO of L’il Masters, these diapers are of high quality and can easily be benchmarked against the international brands. L’il Masters’ exports markets include Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Mozambique, Swaziland (Eswatini), Lesotho and Madagascar.
The business gives back to the community in various programs and has robust sustainability programs in place. They have 700 solar panels installed at their new head office, making it the only diaper manufacturer have a power efficient facility to this level and that leverages sustainable energy options for its factories in South Africa. Other carbon offsetting projects in the business include water saving, paperless invoicing and water cooling systems. Waste and dust extraction units have also been installed in the building to minimize the environmental impact. Plastic and cardboard waste is collected daily for recycling, by the waste management companies that the business works with.
Sector Challenges
The absorbent hygiene sector in South Africa has faced challenges in recent times. Some are related to the damage that plastic-based products cause to the environment when they find their way to rivers and oceans in South Africa.
More pressure is coming to the industry. Environmental lobby groups and communities are all calling for solutions and they are putting the Department of Environmental Affairs as well as municipalities under pressure to force the brand owners and manufacturers to take responsibility for the pollution caused by used diapers and sanitary pads in communities, water systems, beaches and the general environment.
This challenge is also common in the rest of the continent and used diapers are some of the products found blocking cities’ rainwater drainage system, causing city flooding and other challenges during the rainy season. To make matters worse, municipalities across the country in South Africa are not coping with the urban growth rate. Municipal budgets are under pressure and household waste is not collected regularly, causing service delivery protests from communities that are annoyed by general litter that includes used diapers and feminine hygiene products being thrown around the neighborhoods by pets.
The service delivery issues blur the lines between where the brand owners’ responsibilities start and the normal basic municipal service delivery.
It also does not help that there is not enough trust between the brand owners and manufacturers, the bigger global brand owners and the smaller independent family owned AHP brand owners. Owing to the lack of trust, the industry is unable to come together as one body to address the challenges facing them. As an industry they have made several attempts to come together but without success so far. Interestingly, though, other industries such as the food and beverage have successfully come together with other brand owners and other stakeholders such as communities, retailers, and others to form several organizations focused on the recovery and recycling of plastics, such as Petco, the PET Recycling company, Polyco, SA Plastics Pact and several others, which bring together recyclers, retailers, brand owners, converters, national government, raw material producers, academia and consumers. Even the glass industry in South Africa has made good headway that the AHP sector can learn from.
Effects of the Pandemic
Owing to disruptions that the pandemic has caused to the global inventories and supply of containers and the shipping routes, freight rates have increased significantly and in some cases more than doubled. This has meant that there is a significant rise in the cost of imported raw materials of AHPs. Christmas is around the corner and demand for shipments to fulfill Christmas orders will not allow the freight rates to come down.
China is one of the key supply points for products like artificial Christmas trees and toys. Add the fact that soon after Christmas season the Chinese New Year is also in the cards, these factors will almost guarantee that the freight rates will not subside anytime soon.
With China out of the picture as a supplier, the local nonwoven suppliers like Spunchem have become even more powerful. Fortunately for them, they also have the government’s support, who is one of the biggest buyers of face masks and in their purchasing process, insists that the local companies that they buy from must prove that their supply of raw materials and other inputs is local. This point also emphasizes even more the need for local supply of nonwoven raw materials for the hygiene industry.
To this end, PFNonwovens is currently expanded its manufacturing facility in Cape Town with another $40 million investment that will create 40 new jobs. The first company to invest in the latest Reicofil R5 machinery in South Africa, this investment reinforces PFNonwovens as the market leader in spunmelt for the hygiene sector.
As a result of the investment, the company “will have the capacity to meet the growing local market needs for high value and specialty products with increasing levels of softness, comfort and sustainability,” according to the company. The Western Cape was chosen for this expansion because of its world class infrastructure and access to the rest of the continent.
It will be interesting to see what will happen in the short to medium term as L’il Masters and National Pride compete for the position of the third biggest player in the South African market.
