The industrial disposable glove market has seen consistent double-digit growth over the last 40 years. Glove use for applications from plumbing to electrical to mechanical has increased annually.
There was a time that few if any workers in industrial settings wore disposable gloves. Many workers of a certain vintage still don’t, with a common complaint being that gloves restrict their range of motion and just don’t “feel right.”
The good news is, younger generations have made wearing industrial gloves more commonplace. The auto mechanic of today is more likely to pull on a pair of nitrile gloves before reaching into an engine compartment than even a decade ago.
Glove use in medical settings became ubiquitous during the AIDS crisis in the ’80s and ’90s, but at the same time, industrial workplaces also steadily stepped up their glove use.
Industrial glove usage has steadily grown
Industries from food service to janitorial & sanitation were until fairly recently not bastions of glove use, despite outbreaks of everything from salmonella to E. coli. While the chances of gloves being worn in the assembly of your next meal have improved, the struggle to get food service employees gloved up continues.
What changed the rules for everyone, of course, was the coronavirus. It pushed health and hygiene awareness to all-time highs. The fact that the pandemic continues to show signs that instead of going away it will settle into an endemic existence will only put continued emphasis on personal protective equipment.
That doesn’t mean that glove use will continue at 2020-2021 rates; the supercharged days of COVID are gone, at least until the next global pandemic. But people from mechanics to sandwich makers to cleaning crews to staff at senior care facilities are continuing to use more gloves.
Growth opportunities aren’t going away
The market is predicted to keep growing at double-digit rates. Now that the labor shortages created by the pandemic are over, manufacturing capacity is once again substantial and availability is restored.
It’s also important to remember that the disposable glove market is a marathon, not a sprint. As a commodity, gloves do not lose their favor; once a worker gets used to them, he or she is not likely to return to bare-handing their work.
AMMEX has been the leading industrial disposable glove distributor for more than three decades. We have a variety of gloves suited for an entire spectrum of use cases.
You can’t go wrong with nitrile
Start with Gloveworks Raised Diamond Texture Gloves—in 8-mil orange and green, 6-mil black and royal blue—an excellent choice for delivering a firm grip as well as first-rate barrier protection. Need an all-around nitrile workhorse? There’s the 5-mil Gloveworks Black Nitrile (GPNB) and the 3-mil X3 Black Nitrile, a glove that is turning heads in the food service and light-industrial sectors.
Contact your sales rep, or log into your account at our Online Portal. And don’t forget to set yourself up with glove samples, which will help boost your sales by at least 50%.
