Henkel Hybrid Adhesives Earn Industry Accolades

Innovation has been a common thread in Henkel’s history since the company was founded in 1876. Recently, the company’s breakthroughs in bonding solutions earned the 2019 Innovation Award from the Adhesive and Sealant Council (ASC).

Every year, the ASC Innovation Awards recognize the top three innovations from the adhesive and sealant industry. At its 2019 Annual Spring Convention in Philadelphia in April, the ASC presented its top award to Henkel for the LOCTITE® Universal Structural Bonders powered by hybrid technology.

This boundary-breaking hybrid product boasts unprecedented strength, a faster cure and multi-surface adhesion. LOCTITE Universal Structural Bonders are also safer to handle than many traditional structural bonders. Finding the right formulation to ensure that the curing systems would be reactive enough to cure the adhesive rapidly, but stable enough for longer term room temperature was challenging and required many years of research by 25+ scientists. As a testament to their novelty, these products have received five patents to date, with nine more patents pending.

Manufactured in Dublin, Ireland, and Yantai, China, the high-performing hybrid product line received an enthusiastic market response after it was launched globally in mid-2017. Like all the best innovations, Henkel’s hybrid technology addresses a real need.

“Today, the market is flooded with structural adhesives that are highly customized to a specific application. This makes it challenging for end users to select the optimum assembly solution for their application,” explains Jamie Serenson, Innovation Program Manager at Henkel. “Hybrid products offer end users a single-solution, multi-application, go-to product.”

Today, LOCTITE Universal Structural Bonders are used widely in equipment maintenance and repair, OEM assembly, as well as in the manufacture of elevators, rail road cars, electric motors, jet interiors, radio frequency identification tags, signage, furniture and mannequins — to name a few.

“Developing this product line was no easy feat. It required a clear strategic vision that was strongly and consistently supported by senior management over many years,” says Serenson, who sees a promising future for the product line. “As a pioneer in this space, Henkel is well positioned to be the market leader in the newly forming category of hybrid products.”

Henkel continues to invest heavily in hybrid bonding technology research. These efforts have led to a number of new patent applications and further breakthroughs in performance and cost reductions — all of which will be incorporated in a second generation of products to be launched soon.

See for yourself! Watch an amazing demonstration of the bonding power of Loctite 4070.
 

To learn more about the ASC awards read here.