Hand Sanitizer Turns Into Holiday Hit As Imports To U.S. Doubles

October 21, 2009 7:32 p.m. EST

New York, NY (AHN) - Hand sanitizer shipments to the U.S. in the third quarter of 2009 more than doubled compared to the same period last year indicating that the hygiene product would be a hot item during the holidays, according to a global supply chain analyst.

There were 128 waterborne "hand sanitizer" shipments to the U.S. in the third quarter of 2009 compared to 56 shipments in the third quarter of 2008, Panjiva said Wednesday.

"If the September decline in global trade is any indication, U.S. companies aren't expecting many items to fly off store shelves this holiday season. However, it certainly seems that U.S. companies are betting that Swine Flu will turn hand sanitizer into a holiday hit," said Panjiva CEO Josh Green in a press release.

Panjiva was able to measure the hand sanitizer imports to the U.S. by using a natural language processing algorithms that analyzed tens of millions of shipping records to quickly identify shipments that included the phrase "hand sanitizer."