Masks are already starting to disappear from national production lines

The century-old Lupo, the largest national manufacturer of protective masks against Covid-19, decided to suspend the production of the accessory in its 130,000-square-meter factory, with units in Araraquara (SP) and Itabuna (BA), the company learned. sheet.

Lupo evaluated that the end of mandatory protection in large urban centers, this month, would already allow the company to stop manufacturing the product, whose main sales channels are the website and the approximately 430 brand franchises spread across the country.

Between April 2020 and September 2021, approximately 70 million units were sold, including the Trifil brand, which belongs to the company.

Sought, Lupo did not respond to the report because it is in a period of silence. The company is publicly traded and is on the verge of releasing its financial results for the fourth quarter of 2021.

According to the latest data released, Lupo earned around R$ 257 million with the product from January to September last year. In the entire year of 2020, it had earned BRL 59.1 million from the category.

Vice-champion in sales between January and September 2021, a period in which the company as a whole earned BRL 1.12 billion, the masks category only lost to underwear, but was ahead of the sock segment (a product that gave rise to the company) and the sports products category (such as t-shirts, shorts and shorts).

Other manufacturers, such as Fiber Knit from Rio Grande do Sul, took the same initiative. The production of the brand’s sports masks, which were the official accessory of the Brazilian Olympic team in Japan last year, reached 12,000 units a day, but since February it has been suspended. So far, the company has sold 4.5 million units.

Formerly specialized in the manufacture of leather for footwear, Fiber Knit saw a new market for masks, which increased its undisclosed sales by fivefold. But the demand decreased from November, rekindled in January with the ômicron and, in February, it fell again, leading the company to suspend production, made in 3D printer and with PET bottles as raw material.

“The drop in mask sales was already expected”, says Thiago Dal Pizzol, director of Fiber. “Since the end of last year, we began to redirect our production to other items of greater added value, such as sneakers and backpacks”, he says.

The company is also opening a new sales front for its stock of masks: pharmacies. “The product was sold until now on our website and in sporting goods stores. But we believe that a lot of people will want to maintain protection, looking for the product in an environment associated with health care”, says Pizzol.

So far, Fiber has already closed agreements with the drugstore chains São João, in Rio Grande do Sul, and Tapajós, in the North and Northeast. “Protection will continue for the control of various diseases, not only Covid, which has not ended either”, says Pizzol, who does not rule out the resumption on a smaller scale, to supply drugstores.

Raia Drogasil, the largest national chain of pharmacies, with around 2,500 stores across the country, informed sheet that the peak of sales of masks took place between January and April 2021. And that from then on sales “stabilized”. Even so, the company said, sales in February this year were 13% higher than in February last year.

The subsidiary of the American multinational 3M, in turn, with a factory in Itapetininga (SP), told sheet which readjusted the production of its PFF2 mask in the face of a 25% decline in demand. “The company maintains its normalized supply for customers in the professional segments, little impacted by the non-mandatory use of masks for the general population, recently defined by governments”, he informed, in a note.

The company, which does not disclose local production figures, said only that, globally, it had increased its capacity to reach 2 billion masks produced a year – four times the amount manufactured before the pandemic. “In Brazil, the company has increased the volume of its production of masks by three times to meet demand,” he said.

R$600 for a designer mask

Since former Minister of Health Luiz Felipe Mandetta went public, on April 1, 2020, asking people to start improvising homemade masks to protect the nose and mouth region, a lot has changed in Brazilian habits and in retail sales. The law that made the use of masks mandatory in the country was only sanctioned by President Jair Bolsonaro on July 3, 2020.

The remedied way out of protection against the new coronavirus presented by the former minister, of tying a cloth to the face, has evolved into an accessory with certified safety and even fashion appeal.

With a double layer of fabric, Lupo’s masks are made with Rhodia’s Amni Virus-Bac OFF polyamide thread, which has undergone antibacterial and antiviral evaluation tests by the Industrial Biotechnology Laboratory of the Technological Research Institute (IPT). Previously offered only in black or white, the accessory now encompasses a varied range of colors, both for adults and children. The package with two units is offered on the brand’s website at R$ 26.

The Fiber Knit, designed for athletes, with a 3D anti-suction support and 30 triple layer filters, is found on the brand’s website from R$ 59.90, in different colors.

A global survey by the international consultancy Euromonitor, in 46 markets, released in April last year, pointed out that Brazil was the fifth country in the world with the lowest unit price of reusable fabric masks – around US$ 1. Vietnam had the lowest average price for face masks (around US$0.60) and Sweden the highest value (US$13).

The research pointed to the existence of luxury models: the British brand Burberry, for example, last year offered seven models with prices around US$ 120 (R$ 584), while the Italian Dolce & Gabanna had launched a line with prices from US$89 (R$433) to US$122 (R$594).

The Euromonitor survey took into account washable and reusable cloth masks made from common fabrics such as cotton. Surgical masks, disposable paper masks or models with respirators, such as N95 masks, did not enter the survey.

3M does not have a suggested retail price for its PFF2 masks – which have a respirator and are one of the most recommended models by health authorities, as they have a minimum filtration of 94% against the penetration of aerosols​. But it is possible to find the model for sale on the internet in packages of 10 units at R$ 64.

Mask took the place of pantyhose at Lupo

In an interview with sheet in June last year, Liliana Aufiero, president of Lupo, said that the masks came to represent close to a third (31%) of the company’s revenue in May. At the time, the company was producing 300,000 units a day and had a three-month waiting list.

In order to manufacture the masks from April 2020, a month after the global pandemic was declared, Lupo stopped manufacturing pantyhose and adapted the machines for production.

The idea arose after a charity action: Lupo began manufacturing TNT masks for the team at Santa Casa de Araraquara, in the interior of São Paulo, where the company’s headquarters are located. Subsequently, it decided to serve the common consumer.

“When I launched the mask, I thought it would only sell for 90 days,” Liliana told sheet, in June. The businesswoman said at the time that she was rooting for the pandemic to end soon: for public health and for Lupo to go back to manufacturing products with greater added value.

Also in an interview with sheet in September, Lupo reported that it had already reduced the production of masks by half, as the numbers of the disease dropped with the advance of vaccination.