Introduction:
             The oral hygiene market comprises toothpaste, denture products, mouthwash/breath fresheners and ancillary items, such as dental floss and disclosing tablets. Toothpaste dominates the market, being the one product which is accepted as a necessity, while the other categories included in this report are complementary solutions to lesser or greater degrees. The market for toothpaste in particular has hampered the growth of the industry as this product has long since reached saturation point and sales tend to depend on which specific brand is being offered at a discount price.
             Toothpaste - A Short History:
             Throughout civilisation, man has always needed to have healthy teeth, the primary reason being for survival. Today we do not really need teeth for survival, it could even be said that they play a far more aesthetic role in our lives. When people first started taking the conscious decision to maintain their teeth, the methods were rather crude and may have even caused more damage to teeth than improve their effectiveness and keep them healthy.
             First attempts are tooth cleaning included using abrasives such as crushed bone, crushed egg and oyster shells, which were used to clean debris from teeth.
             Tooth powders were the first noticeable advance and were made up of elements like powdered charcoal, powdered bark and some flavouring agents. This would be applied to teeth using a simple stick. This mixture of abrasive and flavour is the first example that cleaning teeth was becoming part of man's ritual. Adding flavour is meant to make cleaning teeth an enjoyable process, something cleaning with crushed bone probably wasn't!
             By the early 1900's, consumers were recognising the importance of clean teeth and as a result, many chemists had begun using special ingredients which made the powder into a cream and then came paste in a tube.
             There were not many technical developments in the toothpaste industry during the mid-1...