Analysis and Studies - Products analysis
Lighters: import and export
November 29th 2022
Since the discovering of fire in the Paleolithic Era, human beings have been trying to find a way to collect it and keep it at hand.
In 1805 a French chemist invented an early form of matches, which was perfected and made more secure in the next years until our days.
It was in 1823, however, that Johann Wolfgang Döbereiner invented the lighter. As a chemist, he mixed sulfuric acid, zinc, and hydrogen gas to make a not-yet-safe first design of a portable flame. Thanks to its success, the “Döbereiner’s Lamp” was a starting point in the evolution of the lighter.
New versions of the lighter included flint lighters and disposable lighters. These last ones came out 1973 and became a trend thanks to their reliability, affordability, and safety features. Still used nowadays, they can come in different designs and colors. Finally, lighters are not only useful, but also personal: some people collect them and get attached to their personal ones.
Lighters users are located all around the world, and so are producers. Trade in lighters represents 0.011% of total world trade, making this product 742nd in the most traded products chart of 2020. In the same year, the top exporters were China ($787M), France ($257M), United States ($119M), Spain ($104M), and Germany ($66M). At the same time, lighters were mostly imported by United States ($272M), Germany ($105M), France ($64.4M), Indonesia ($58.9M), and Japan ($58M).
Between 2019 and 2020, the fastest declining exporters were Hong Kong (-$15.1M), Italy (-$13.6M), China (-$8.88M), Tunisia (-$7.09M), and France (-$6.02M), while the fastest growing importers were Nigeria ($9.89M), Slovakia ($9.06M), France ($9.04M), United States ($6.18M), and Bangladesh ($4.23M).
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