Recent analysis by Frost and Sullivan on the European industrial protective gloves market pegs annual revenues of the overall market at 1.05 billion Euro in 2003, including gloves made out of leather, textile, polymer-textile, polymer, and technical fibres. By 2010 revenues will have grown to merely 1.26 billion Euro at a compound annual growth rate of 2.7 percent.

Although many of the manufacturers have already relocated a good part of their production operations to Eastern Europe, Africa and Asia - to benefit from lower labor costs and easy availability of raw material - they are now ironically facing growing competition in the home market, as well as downward price pressures from cheaper gloves produced in China and the Far East.

Since this trend is rising in specific ...