INDA and EDANA recently published the sixth edition of their Worldwide Outlook for the Nonwovens Industry report. EDANA and INDA are allies in a strategic partnership to create an environment beneficial to the sustainable and profitable growth of the nonwovens industry. It is also our role to provide credible statistics to our members and the overall industry. To that end, we publish this report to provide a benchmark of the industry’s progress through the years.  This information is intended to assist those in the nonwovens industry in making better business decisions.

It is amazing to believe this multi-billion-dollar industry had its modern start only fifty years ago. Until the last decade, the nonwovens industry was primarily based in Europe, North America, and Japan. It is in those three regions that modern nonwoven technologies were conceived and developed. Now, nonwovens are produced on thousands of lines around the world. The nonwovens industry is now truly global. The worldwide nonwovens industry’s prospects continue to be favorable, and it remains a rewarding and dynamic industry in which to be involved.

By fulfilling fundamental and more sophisticated needs, nonwoven-based products bring value and benefits to society in a variety of applications from personal to health care, filtration to transportation, and construction to apparel.

Macro Drivers

The strength of the economy and demographic trends are the significant drivers of demand within the nonwovens industry. Consumer discretionary spending and business investment—both correlated to the strength of the economy—drive demand in nearly every nonwoven end use category, while certain demographic trends—such as births and aging—drive demand in the remaining end use categories. The basic building blocks of nonwovens demand are thus based upon the global economic and population forecasts.

Over the forecast period (2018–2023), three items are of the greatest significance in regard to the economic forecast:

• China’s structural moderation and transition to more moderate growth;
• trade protectionism and the cyclical slowdown in the U.S.; and
• the persistence of high levels of policy uncertainty in Europe.

Overall global growth remains modest—3.3% annually—and uneven across countries and regions through the forecast period. Through the forecast period, economic growth is forecast to be stronger in the advanced economies, compared with the recent past, but weaker in emerging markets and developing economies. The emerging markets and developing economies, though, will account for a growing share of world output and still account for a large share of the world’s growth.

Meanwhile, three demographic trends play a role in the population forecasts:

• global population growth is slowing, as is the absolute number of babies born;
• the increasing total population of the elderly; and
• the rising level of GDP per capita globally.

The relationship between nonwovens and population impacts more than just the absorbent hygiene market; as the elderly age, the medical/surgical market grows, and as families start, the home and office furnishings market increases, as does the building construction market.

GDP per capita serves as a benchmark in categorizing countries, not only as poor, developing, or rich, but also in terms of nonwoven end use product purchase. For example, in general a country begins to use baby diapers when GPD per capita reaches US$3,500 and reaches the opportunity for 100% penetration around GDP per capita of US$23,500. So, while Asia accounted for 54% of the population in 2018, the GDP per capita for the region was $6,751 (Figure I-20). This number is above the threshold for some of the single-use products such as feminine hygiene (≈$1,000) and baby diapers (≈4,000), but just under the threshold for baby wipes (≈$8,000) and below for incontinence products (≈$10,00) and other wipes products (≈$11,000). While much discussion centers around India and diaper consumption, in 2018 India’s GDP per capita was $2,036 compared to China’s $9,608.

Nonwovens Supply

The worldwide production of nonwoven roll goods reached US$56.2 billion in 2018. INDA and EDANA forecast that worldwide nonwovens production will continue to grow, and expect that in the period from 2018 through 2023, the industry will expand at an annual average rate of 4.8%.

For the last decade from 2008 through 2018, nonwoven tonnage increased at an average annual growth rate of 5.7%. This 10-year period average annual growth is quite impressive, considering that the nonwoven industry was affected by the Great Recession (2007-2009) as well the year commencing in 2010 and continuing to 2011. Important sectors for this industry—like the production of cars, housing and building construction, geotextiles, and home furnishings—all declined. Other market segments being somewhat recession-proof, showed a continuous growth in global demand of nonwovens materials both in tonnage and in square meters.

Asia is by far the dominant nonwoven producing region, accounting for 45.5% of the world’s production in 2018, up from 32.9% in 2008. China accounts for a significant proportion (76%) of the Asia volume and is now one of the most important nonwovens producer worldwide.

The production of nonwovens in North America is forecast to improve, resulting in tonnage production expanding at rate nearly double (+3.5%) that of real GDP growth. Greater Europe—which includes Turkey, a significant producer of nonwovens—will experience a lower nonwoven growth of around 2.5% until 2023. The South American region’s nonwovens output, after experiencing 6.2% annual growth over the last decade (2008–2018), is forecast to grow 4.2% annually through the forecast period (2018–2023). In Middle Eastern & North African (MENA) after experiencing an average growth of 6.4% over the last decade, will keep growing by 7.5% annually during the forecast period.

The spunlaid and drylaid processes accounted for the majority of nonwovens production in 2018, 87% of the tonnage. World drylaid nonwovens output, including all bonding processes, have shown considerable growth over the past decade from 2008–2018, rising 5.2% per year. The overall production of spunlaid—all polymer-based nonwovens—grew at an average rate of 7.3% annually from 2008 through 2018.

Nonwovens Demand

Production growth through the historical period (2008–2018) varied across the individual end use categories as each has its own unique demand drivers. While some end uses are more impacted by population growth and rising incomes (typically the single-use end uses), others are impacted by the health of the economy and taking share from other competing materials (typically the durables end uses). Further, each may be at a different development stage and/or penetration rate within a global region.

Not including the other category, absorbent hygiene is by far the single largest end use category accounting for 25% of the global production in 2008 and 22% in 2018. In 2008, the second largest category was home and office furnishings—accounting for 10%—however, with its rapid growth, the wipes category moved to the second largest by 2018, accounting for 11% of the production in 2018.

In the previous ten years, average annual growth rates (AAGR) across the end uses ranged from 10.8% (transportation) to 3.5% (home and office furnishings). Through the forecast period medical end uses is expected to be the strongest growing, while the slowest growing is forecast to be the other category.

Within the durables end uses—as seen in some regions with a slowing economy—end use can vary greatly, as the building construction and transportation markets did not react in the same way during the historical period. This is a result, in general, of some of the durable end uses—notably transportation—taking share from other materials, due to the flexibility of an engineered fabric that through innovation can be adapted to meet the needs of materials for today and into the future. Nonwovens provide options for weight and cost savings due to their versatility, functionality and recyclability.

Trade Flows

The new U.S. trade policy and the negotiation of different trade agreements have recently drawn public attention to the importance of trade in goods between regions. Moreover, the ultimate goal of major investments, like the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative, is to increase these trade flows.

After the slowdown recorded in 2009, the trade in nonwoven roll goods has been steadily growing over the past decade. The trend is associated with a number of developments: growth and increased sophistication of production has given birth to strategies involving fragmentation and reorganization of firms’ activities, both in terms of ownership boundaries and location for production.

Looking at the 2018 list of major global exporters of nonwoven, it is easy to deduce that the regions with the larger capacities of production—China, U.S., and EU28—are the main exporters of nonwovens globally. It is also important to underline that U.S. and the European Union are also still the main importers, while Chinese imports decreased.

Despite the bulky characteristic of many nonwovens, a continuous expansion of trade of roll goods has been recorded. This is particularly true for the European Union where around 18% of the local production in tonnage is now sold to non-EU countries (it was 14% ten years ago), while 18% of the apparent mill consumption within the EU is coming from outside the Union (it was only 8.5% in 2008). Therefore, despite the complexity of the trade links between countries on a worldwide basis, it is crucial to monitor these flows.

In 2018, China alone exported 964,000 tonnes of nonwovens, nearly 4 times more than in 2008. The European Union and the United States imported roughly one third of Chinese exports. However, EU28 has never exported and imported more than in 2018. Nevertheless, in both the EU28 and the U.S., imports grew faster than exports over the last couple of years, causing a deterioration of their respective trade balances.

Final Thoughts

In summary, the outlook for the global nonwovens industry is very encouraging, not only with the positives of improving economic outlook and demographic trends that are positive for nonwoven usage, but the growth by the inherent nature of nonwoven being an engineered fabric. The demand for nonwovens is not only driven by the economy and demographic trends but, as nonwovens can be engineered to meet specific performance attributes for a specific end use, the gaining of share from other materials in existing end use and the ability to enter entirely new end uses will continue to be a catalyst for nonwovens growth.

Order the report today to receive a complimentary updated historical and forecast summary in the summer of 2020. This—287 page, 92 figures, 40 tables— report presents detailed production data by region for the global nonwovens industry for 2008, 2013 and 2018, and a forecast for 2023. Specifically, the goals of the report were to:

• provide economic and demographic trends, as they are significant drivers of demand within the nonwovens industry;
• explain industry trends within regions, processes, end uses, raw materials, and trade flows;
• present industry production for region by process and end use markets;
• provide an overall picture of global nonwoven roll goods trade; and
• define and clarify production processes and end-use market segmentation to provide greater clarity in the industry.

To order the report contact Cindy Garcia ([email protected], 01-919-459-3711) or visit https://imisw.inda.org/store/.