CBI News Bulletin November / December 2005

CBI News Bulletin Page 18 European Market Information
Protective footwear
Those boots are made for walking
The market for protective
footwear offers good opportunities
for exporters from developing
countries. Keen competition is
forcing European buyers to look to
low-cost supply countries.
Footwear made for working conditions
can be divided into three categories:
safety footwear, protective footwear and
occupational footwear. The protective
footwear segment is expected to show an
annual growth rate of about 1% between
2005 and 2007 in the EU. Consumers in
Business Processing Outsourcing
India and
Africa in path
of BPO wave
A wave of business opportunities is
rolling towards the developing world,
as not only large European companies
but small- to medium-sized ones
also are likely to outsource more and
more business processes in the coming
years. Among offshore destinations,
India and Africa are in an especially
good position.
Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) has
been defined as ´the delegation of one or
more business processes or functions to
an external provider, who administrates
and manages the selected processes,
based on performance metric´.
Processes often relocated in this way
include human resources, logistics, procurement,
engineering, marketing, sales,
facility operations and management,
legal work, finance and accounting.
The level of offshore BPO among small
and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) is
still limited, but is expected to grow rapidly
in the short to medium term. Large
companies increasingly are setting up
their own offshore offices, so-called ‘captive
centres’. India is the benchmar-king
region in the field of offshore outsourcing,
but Europe is increasingly looking
at near-shore locations, too. Eastern
European countries like Poland, the
southern Europe are expected to spend
more in the short run and eastern
Europeans will follow in the long run. In
2004, 61 millions pairs of protective
shoes were sold in the European Union
at a total value of € 1.7 billion.
Production, meanwhile, slowed down in
almost all EU countries between 2001 and
2003, by an average of 6.7% (in terms of
value) each year. Italy remained the leading
producer. Competition on the protective
footwear market is expected to
steadily increase, creating further opportunities
for exporters in low-cost coun-
Czech Republic and Hungary, are gaining
popularity. Africa’s share is also growing,
thanks largely to the absence of language
barriers in the north (French) and the
south (Dutch and English). Africa’s relative
cultural and geographic nearness to
Europe is also an advantage.
Offshore call centres
7.5% of European call centres was
engaged in offshore outsourcing in 2003.
Another 2% was thinking of outsourcing
in the next 36 months and 6.5% in the
long term. On the whole, the United
Protective gloves
Protective
gloves market
saturated
The European Union market for
protective gloves, particularly
leather and textile gloves, is saturated.
Consumption is stable and
imports are increasing, firing up
competition and differentiation
among established (brand) manufacturers,
and price competition
among private label manufacturers
and importers.
EU consumers spent a total of € 1,156
million on protective gloves in 2004. The
market for this product is expected to
grow 2.3% per year to an estimated market
size of € 1,238 million in 2007.
Germany was the biggest EU market for
tries. The leading factors for these
exporters have to do with the right combination
of price, product quality and reliability
of deliveries and delivery times.
The role of developing countries in EU
imports for this segment is clearly:
whereas in 2002 32% of EU imports came
from developing countries, in 2004 the
figure was up to 40%. The United
Kingdom became the leading importer,
passing Germany in 2004.
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market brief.
Kingdom, France and Sweden had the
highest percentage of offshore outsourcing
among EU countries (10 to 15%).
Germany and Italy outsourced modestly,
while the Benelux did not at all, though it
is certainly expected to in the near
future. The main reasons for EU companies
to outsource some of their call centre
functions were cheap labour, access
to a multilingual workforce and the need
for a skilled workforce.
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complete market brief.
this sector in 2004, accounting for 20.8% of
total EU consumption. Spain showed the
highest growth rate. The EU imported 15.4
billion pairs of leather, rubber and knitted
textile gloves. Imports in volume increased
by 8.9% from 2003. Of this growth, 1.4% went
to the traditional EU-15 countries and 7.5%
to the ten new EU countries. In terms of
value, a fall of 1.2% for the EU-15 countries
and an increase of 6.9% for the EU-10 countries
resulted in a total increase of 5.6%.
Malaysia remained by far the most important
supplier of rubber gloves, followed by
Thailand, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and China.
China dominated EU imports of non-rubber
protective gloves (leather, textiles and plastic).
The market for textile and leather protective
gloves is producing many product
innovations or modifications, mainly based
on advantages for end-users or economic
advantages for purchasers. One trend in the
protective gloves market is the growth of the
powder-free and synthetic segments, to the
detriment of latex segments.
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market brief.