Sustainability Is What Packaging Adhesive Industry Is Looking For

Developing packaging adhesives can be a thankless task. Despite being the most important end market for adhesives, the effort and ingenuity used to create packaging products can go almost ignored as they are discarded to get to the contents that they protect.
Nevertheless, packaging adhesives have important roles to play in helping ensure that products are supplied in good condition, and are continually improving their ability to do so. Knowing in which area improved performance is most needed can help direct product development.This is what "Special Chem For Adhesives" has found from their recent survey.

1) Around two-thirds of the respondents chose requirements related to sustainability, while only one-third indicated that technical requirements were more important. However, the interest in renewable resources also has a direct business importance as crude oil prices hit 18-month highs in April. Many raw materials used in adhesives are currently expensive, so looking at different, potentially cheaper, sources makes clear economic sense.


2) Biodegradability was the singlemost important sustainability trend, with the focus on this issue almost exclusively in Asia. A ban on most plastic bags in China is seen as a signpost towards legislation that will accelerate the uptake of eco-friendly packaging, while government and industry in Japan are also promoting the use of biodegradable polymers. Compostability is of comparatively little concern to Specialchem4Adhesives readers, and only those based in Europe, perhaps because it could be considered a subcategory of biodegradability.


3) Similarly, the technical interest in lowering additive migration from packaging adhesives is focussed in Europe, and to a lesser extent North America. The European Commission is demanding migration of additives from adhesives be tackled by specific measures to be adopted in the near future. In the US, the Food and Drug Administration has been regulating adhesive additive migration since the 1970s under 21 C.F.R. § 175.105.

4) In adhesive lamination and co-extrusion manufacturing of gas barrier films, the choice of adhesive contributes to how much gas penetrates the final film. While some packaging must let air flow through pharmaceutical packaging and some food applications, for example, demand that the flow rate is reduced to almost 0 cm3/m2/day. Even helping achieve this by laminating other films together is challenging. However manufacturers can also strive to provide an adhesive that is such an efficient barrier by itself that eliminates the need for additional barrier films and coatings.

Lanxess, TSRC to Build Chinese Plant for Nitrile Rubber

Lanxess and Taiwan’s TSRC Corporation will enter into a 50:50 joint venture in China that will produce Nitrile Rubber (NBR) in Nantong, northwest of Shanghai. The €36m plant will have an initial capacity of 30,000 tonnes per year, and is due on stream in early 2012.


The two companies will begin marketing activities in the next few months, in order to build volume. That demand will be supplied from Lanxess plant in La Wantzenau, France until the Nantong plant starts up.

“The partnership is a win-win-combination. It brings together TSRC’s long-history of engineering and production know-how in China with Lanxess' marketing and technical expertise in synthetic rubber,” said TSRC’s CEO Wei-Hua Tu.


TSRC currently operates emulsion styrene-butadiene rubber (ESBR), polybutadiene rubber (BR) and thermoplastic elastomer (TPE) plants in Nantong and is one of the largest synthetic rubber producers in Asia. The products are sold under the tradename Taipol.


TSRC posted sales of USD 700 million in 2009 and currently employs 1,100 people worldwide. In addition to its Nantong site, TSRC has production plants in Shanghai and Jinan in China as well as in Taiwan and Thailand.


Lanxess is the world’s largest producer of synthetic rubber and NBR. Its products sold under the brand names Perbunan, Krynac, Baymod and Nanoprene are part of Lanxess' Technical Rubber Products business unit.