Rising hand hygiene awareness offers opportunities for handcare chemical suppliers in Australia

Workers in Australia are growing increasingly aware of the importance of proper hand hygiene to curb the spread of infectious diseases in the workplace. A recent campaign in the healthcare sector to reduce hospital-acquired infections through better hand hygiene practices is one initiative that is helping to raise awareness. Thanks to the size of the healthcare industry, the basic tenets of this campaign have also trickled through to other industries.

In 2009, the World Health Organisation introduced its '5 Moments of Hand Hygiene' campaign, which detailed the frequency with which healthcare workers should be washing and sanitising their hands. The global adoption of these guidelines has driven the demand for hand hygiene chemical products, in particular alcohol based hand rubs (ABHR) or hand sanitisers, to record levels.

Frost & Sullivan recently completed a study, Analysis of the Industrial & Institutional Hand Hygiene Chemicals Market in Australia, which analysed feedback from 16 key hand hygiene suppliers, to map the competitive landscape of this industry.

‘Both employers and employees are beginning to understand the importance of hand hygiene in the Australian workplace,’ said Frost & Sullivan Consultant, Dev Anand Dorasamy. ‘While periodic outbreaks of highly infectious diseases, such as the H1N1 in 2009, can have a drastic impact on sales of hand hygiene chemicals, they are nevertheless short-lived. Real growth is driven by the increasing knowledge that the hands are the primary medium for the spread of many diseases.’

He added: ‘The government is doing its part in promoting hand hygiene practices in industrial and institutional (I&I) settings through a 'carrot and stick' approach. While investing heavily in the promotion of good hand hygiene practices through organisations such as Hand Hygiene Australia, it is also concurrently stepping up regulations and compliance monitoring across all industries where hand hygiene is an important factor.’

However, future growth for hand hygiene chemical suppliers is against a background of significant challenges. While the average I&I entity is aware of the need to keep hands clean, they are still in the dark as how best to do it. The effectiveness of hand hygiene products is rarely questioned outside the healthcare arena and cheap bulk soaps, which are prone to contamination in dispensers, are still the industry norm in many sectors. Also, the steady decline of the general industrial sector (especially manufacturing) in Australia, traditionally a high-use sector, is also reducing the total addressable market for this industry.