The packaging industry is going through a change where sustainability is necessary and critical for overall business success. New solutions need to find their way into the market to proactively push forward on lowering the overall CO2 footprint of the products and the production processes — while increasing the usage of bio-based raw materials.
Henkel’s Technomelt Supra ECO is the first carbon-negative, hot-melt adhesive made with a high portion bio-based material — while providing full traceability of the CO2 footprint and the sustainable sourcing of those materials. Learn more here.
To this end, Henkel’s bio-based Technomelt Supra ECO range are the first hot melt solutions capturing CO2 emissions. For Henkel´s Adhesive Technologies business unit, the introduction of solutions like the Technomelt Supra ECO range are a natural step into the future.
In many cases, conventional hot melt adhesives for packaging applications already have a formulation of up to 50% bio-based raw material. This has been industry standard for adhesive manufacturers for years. Until this point, when the bio-based share of raw material was exceeding the threshold, process inefficiencies for producers (such as slower line speeds or shorter equipment cleaning cycles) made it impractical to go further down this road.
However, the expert teams at Henkel were confident that they could achieve a solution that will enable a far higher sustainability rating without having to compromise on the process performance in production. The Technomelt Supra ECO range is the outcome.
“This completely new line of hot melts eclipses every solution currently available,” explains Sergio Mattos, head of Product Development hot melt adhesives North America at Henkel. “With possibilities to exceed more than 80% of bio-based raw material input, without having to pull back on performance, we were able to create an innovative technology that will lead our industry into the future, as this is just the beginning.”
The numbers speak clearly: during lifecycle analysis the Technomelt Supra ECO range has already proven to be not only highly efficient, but also extremely sustainable.
“As we had a very close look at the values we can deliver, we found out that our solutions are not only able to reduce CO2 output during procurement and production, but furthermore bind CO2 if you look at the overall balance for the global warming potential in 100 years.” added Mattos. “We were very happy when we saw the results of the calculations – a negative cradle-to-gate product carbon footprint is the best possible outcome.”
With this approach to modern adhesive solutions Henkel wants to spark the development towards a change within the industry.
“We are all consumers, and we can all clearly see which solutions are needed to meet our expectations for sustainability,” said Stephan Hähnert, business development manager of Sustainability for Consumer Goods Adhesives. After all, demand is the factor that guides the industry, and we see a clear need for holistic and more sustainable thinking along the value chain and ultimately deriving this into products. With our bio-based hot melt Technomelt Supra ECO range we have the goal to motivate further innovation and establish a new standard in packaging.”
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