Adhesives & Sealants Industry Top Stories

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Ultraviolet (UV) light-emitting diode (LED) curing technology offers significant advantages compared to traditional mercury UV curing. As a result, adhesive bonding, sealing, and coating processes in factory assembly lines are rapidly upgrading to UV LED curing technology.

The ideal pressure-sensitive adhesive (PSA) delivers exactly the right amount of bonding at the lowest cost. Choosing the right adhesive hasn’t always been easy, however. We have all heard stories about adhesives failing prematurely, as well as how costly those failures can be to product manufacturers.

Water-based adhesives for paper lamination are typically formulated with different types of binders, including: natural polymers (e.g., dextrins and starches), inorganic “polymers” (e.g., sodium silicates), and oil derivative-based polymers (e.g., polyvinyl alcohol and polyvinyl acetate).

Operating in the food and beverage industry requires careful considerations for packaging—from food safety to aesthetics.

Acrylate and silicone have dominated the medical adhesives market for years. However, the adhesives currently available often require device engineers to choose between strength and wear duration, or comfort and pliability.

Producers focus on minimizing waste, reducing costs, increasing product quality, and maximizing plant efficiency. Wasted efforts are certainly a drain on resources, in addition to wasted product, creating the need to evaluate and implement lean manufacturing principles.

Looking ahead, sustainable packaging represents an important opportunity for the print and paper industry. This comes as consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies increasingly seek to make their products more sustainable, along with the packaging they use.

Better resistance to UV, abrasion, scratching, and impact. Better adhesion and improved properties for water-based formulation. The demands on today’s coatings, adhesives, sealants, and elastomers (CASE) create a long list of desirable properties for feedstocks.

I have worked with companies that manufacture superglue and polyurethane glue, both of which are single-component, no-mix adhesives. Superglue, which is the common term for cyanoacrylate adhesive, has been around for about 60 years. In contrast, the polyurethanes are about 20 years old in the retail market and somewhat older in professional woodworking. I admit to using both types of adhesive regularly.

The global adhesives and sealants market grew from approximately $45 billion in 2010 to around $63 billion last year, according to The Adhesive and Sealant Council’s recently released “2020-2023 North American Market Report for Adhesives and Sealants, with a Global Overview.” During this period, over 200 patent applications (simple family groups) in the technical fields of adhesives and sealants were filed across the five major IP jurisdictions (US, EU, CN, JP, KR).