Whilst COVID-19 vaccines are bound to affect the market for hygiene products, the demand is expected to remain above pre-pandemic levels as hand-cleaning habit is here to stay, an executive at Ecolab said.
The leading firm has supplied Oxford's vaccine-makers, supermarkets and the NHS with products during the pandemic this year, and supplies three million commercial sites globally.
"It will of course go down from these current peak levels (but) we do believe it will be higher than 2019," Sam De Boo, Ecolab's president for Western Europe, told Reuters on Thursday.
"For hand hygiene, we think that still the market will be 30 per cent to 50 per cent higher than it used to be. But of course, where we currently see an explosion of ... five to ten times more - that will normalise."
Two COVID-19 vaccines are on course for possible approval in Britain before the end of the year.
Ecolab said its two products - a hand-rub and a surface disinfectant - had been shown to be specifically effective against the coronavirus following tests in Germany.
De Boo expects the hand-cleaning routine would become commonplace even as people start getting back to normal.
"In the past, when you did not see, let's say any dirt or any soil, you felt it was clean and it was trusted. People who have ... lived through this pandemic, I think, will have a very different understanding on that going forward,” he said.
"I think there is a mindset change."
Ecolab secured a deal in the summer to supply 5 million litres of hand sanitiser to the NHS, which was the firm's biggest one-time customer order.
