The filtration market is expanding—both in product scope and in number of participants. Not only are new companies—not traditionally invested in filtration—entering the market, but many companies already participating in filtration are busy expanding their roles in this market.

There are a number of reason why filtration is so attractive—high growth, decent margins, varied technology—but it is the average consumer’s awareness of the need for clean air and water that has been touted again and again as the main growth driver in filtration. Where once most consumers were content to use an inexpensive filter in their home HVAC systems, now many are spending triple or even quadruple to ensure the air they breathe at home is clean. This has widened the playing field in the residential filtration segment.
   
Once seen as a commodity segment, residential filtration is emerging as an important market for suppliers of filtration media across the technology spectrum. Sophisticated media suppliers who once stayed only in the higher end filtration markets are looking to broaden their customer base by tapping into this market, while the companies that once made lower end, or commodity style, home filters have upped their technological capabilities to add more value to their products.
   
This has created a new kind of competition in the home filtration market and this new “battlefield,” as one executive called it, is just one of the many new phenomena shaping the filtration market. For more on this dynamic nonwovens segment, please see “Filtration Attracts a Crowd” on page 28.
  
 Also in this issue is a Euromonitor-penned report on the feminine hygiene market. Find out what is driving growth, as well as declines, in this important segment on page 50. And, on page 76 we report on CINTE Techtextil, one of Asia’s premier nonwovens and technical textiles exhibition.
   
As always, we appreciate your comments.

Karen Bitz McIntyre
Editor
[email protected]