Three podcasts will help attendees get the most out of their experience at the ASC Fall Convention and Expo. All three can be found at www.adhesivesmag.com/pods.

Chat with the Chairman

Rusty Thompson, ASC chairman and president of Evans Adhesive, shares highlights of the Fall Convention and Expo. “We will have more of an end user speaker format during the technical sessions, with experts from electronics and building and construction coming in to discuss market opportunities for the industry,” he says. “We will also have a strong focus on hot melts, as both the short course that will be co-located with the meeting and the convention will have tracks dedicated to this effort. We have also already filled our Advanced Technology track sessions, which will feature seven speakers focused on emerging research.”

Emerald Kalama Chemical: K-FLEX®

Emerald Kalama Chemical’s Shamsi Gravel details the development and expansion of the company’s K-FLEX® platform. “The K-FLEX platform has more than doubled globally over the past few years,” she says. “In the U.S., we just completed our second expansion and it actually doubled our capacity since 2011… Our success is measured by how well these products have been embraced by our customers. Over the past several years, we’ve launched five new products and filed four new patent applications for the K-FLEX platform. Over half of our sales, actually, this year, is a result of products that we’ve developed in recent years.”

To learn more, be sure to stop by the Emerald Performance Materials booths (22 and 23) at the Expo.

Keynote Preview

John Felmy, chief economist for the American Petroleum Institute and keynote speaker at the ASC Fall Convention and Expo, talks about the importance of oil and natural gas. “Virtually everything in the economy is either made with or shipped by petroleum and/or natural gas,” he says. “Natural gas and oil are feedstocks for a variety of chemical operations and so on. So you have direct impacts. But then you also have indirect impacts in the sense that oil is a cost of doing business, it’s a cost to consumers. Higher prices tend to depress certain types of demand for products because consumers don’t have money to spend on them. It also raises the cost of producing goods, which can have a negative impact. On the positive side, of course, it’s an important industry. We’re over 7% of gross domestic product, and we employ—directly and indirectly—almost 10 million Americans.”

 John will discuss “Energizing America: Facts for Addressing Energy Policy” at the Opening General Session Breakfast & Keynote on Tuesday, October 22, at 7:30-9:00 a.m.