Moist tissue trend in the toilet paper category

Ildikó Kardos
marketing manager
Essity Hungary

Ildikó Kardos, Essity Hungary Kft.’s marketing manager told our magazine that value sales of both classic toilet papers and moist toilet tissues grew, but volume sales of the former dropped while those of the latter increased in the first 6 months of the year. “Essity’s sales performance developed the same way in both segments as the category’s trend” – she added.

Orsolya Varga
marketing manager
Vajda-Papír

Orsolya Varga, Vajda-Papír Kft.’s marketing manager: “In the moist toilet tissue category drugstores, discount supermarkets and hypermarkets are the most popular places of buying. Every channel improved its performance in this category, in both value and volume sales. Value sales of Ooops! and other branded toilet papers jumped 13%, but volume sales were down 12%. Vajda-Papír’s private label toilet paper sales climbed 14% in value, but they fell 7% in volume.”

Gábor Vizur
category manager
Sofidel Hungary

Gábor Vizur, Sofidel Hungary Kft.’s category manager informed our magazine that like-for-like sales by Sofidel grew way above the category’s average (+20%) in the first 5 months of the year. “In the current difficult economic conditions hygiene paper product makers are going through hard times. More price increases are likely to follow in the future.”

Sándor Gödri, Metsa Tissue HU Kft.’s sales director also reported positive sales results to Trade magazine: “Metsa Tissue’s market share increased in the first half of the year, not only in value but also in volume.”

Sustainability in the limelight

Gábor Vizur’s view is that buyers are increasingly conscious. Price-value ratio matters more than before, but sustainability has also remained important, together with quality and long usability. Sofidel will make the packaging of newly launched products partly from recycled plastic, and the company keeps replacing the packaging of existing ones with 30% or 60% recycled plastic shrink film.

Sándor Gödri
sales director
Metsä Tissue HU

Sándor Gödri’s experience is that shoppers continue to prefer premium 3-ply toilet papers, which constitute almost three quarters of the market. 1-ply product sales are dropping and 2-ply toilet paper sales are stagnating or increasing a little; 4-ply toilet paper sales were down in the first half of 2022. Nearly half of the products sold are packs with 16+ rolls.

Ildikó Kardos added that sustainability is a bigger concern now in the paper product category than in the past. It is important to use raw material from sustainably managed forests, the product packaging needs to be recyclable and it is an advantage if the product is free from bleach and allergens, such as in the Zewa Natural Soft range.

Orsolya Varga talked to us about the importance of the price-value ratio and economical product size: a good example of these is Vajda-Papír’s Maxi toilet paper, which contains 6 maxi-sized rolls with 16-roll worth of paper on them.

Packs including 16+ rolls account for almost half of the sales

Updated portfolio

Kowalska Izabella
category manager
Essity Hungary