Soap bar sales decline as COVID-19 pandemic ebbs

For the whole of 2021, soap bars registered stronger sales compared with 2020.

The ubiquitous soap bar, the consumer’s first line of defence against COVID-19, has seen a decline in demand with the pandemic ebbing. According to data from Kantar, an analytics and brand consulting company, soap bars registered sales growth of 6.8 percent (in volume terms) in the December quarter in 2021 down from 10.5 percent growth in the same period in 2020.

The fourth quarter of 2020 had seen sales of soap bars soar due to the pandemic and the focus on hand hygiene. For the whole of 2021, however, soap bars registered stronger sales compared with 2020.

“2021 had much faster growth than 2020, growing at 8.4 percent as against 7.7 percent. As the pandemic progressed, categories like hand wash and hand sanitisers, which benefited in the early days, waned and some of those volumes were captured by the bar soap category as a result of which 2021 saw higher growth,” said Kantar.

Sanitiser sales decline

Several FMCG companies, such as Marico CavinKare, which had rushed to launch sanitisers and tap the growing demand for them on the back of the pandemic, discontinued those products last year as sales declined.

In the soap bar category, too, soaps that are positioned in the ‘hygiene’ category have witnessed a decline as opposed to other brands.

Brands such as Dettol and Lifebuoy, whose sales grew as much as 33.4 percent in the fourth quarter of CY2020, witnessed only 4.5 percent volume growth in the same period last year.

Bucking the trend

Soaps peddling ‘freshness’, such as Liril and Cinthol, however, saw a reversal of this trend and registered 36 percent growth in the December quarter of 2021, in comparison to 2.7 percent in Q4 of 2020, according to data from Kantar.

Reckitt, the maker of Dettol soaps, had reported record sales in India in 2020 on pandemic-driven demand.

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“Beauty Soaps like Lux continued to grow in Q4 of 2021 and registered 79 percent growth as compared to 4.2 percent in Q4, 2020,” said Kantar.

“Currently, the value growth in the skin cleansing category is the result of inflation-led pricing due to the rising costs of commodities. Sales of soap bars continue to grow as they are ubiquitous products and everyday-use items,” said an HUL spokesperson, in a reply to a query from Moneycontrol.

In 2020, several soap bars in the beauty segment, such as Santoor, had changed the messaging in their campaigns to focus on hygiene as they strived to tap the growing focus on health and safety.

In terms of size, small packs under 40 grams continued to grow handsomely, Kantar said, but the rest (bridge packs) witnessed a decline of 18.7 percent (in volume) in the fourth quarter of 2021.