Product category:
Printing Ink, Chemicals and Pressroom Consumables
News Release from: Henkel KGaA
Edited by the Printingtalk Editorial
Team on 17 June 2005
Adhesives Giant Henkel Aqcuires
Sovereign
Adshesives producer Henkel has acquired Sovereign Specialty Chemicals.
Adshesives producer Henkel has acquired Sovereign Specialty Chemicals Henkel is the owner of major consumer adhesive brands such as Loctite, Sellotape, Pritt and Solvite and leading detergent and personal care brands
This article was originally published on Printingtalk on 6 Jun 2003 at 8.00am (UK)
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Henkel also has a substantial presence in adhesives and coatings for the print and graphics industries, a range enhanced and extended with the addition of Sovereign's products.
With the development of the Newark (UK) production site, Henkel said it is focussing on the UK market and its technical service and manufacturing capabilities will support the full range of jelly, waterbased, hotmelt, hotmelt pressure sensitives, reactive polyurethane (PUR) and UV/EB curing adhesives and coatings.
The sales and customer service team specialises on the UK book binding, narrow web, direct mail and print finishing markets.
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The Newark factory now forms part of a network of manufacturing plants all over the world.
Henkel's facilities for research and development will work to develop the next generation of products.
One key result for bookbinding has been the launch of the fourth generation of reactive polyurethane with a 'dual cure' PUR system, Purmelt, said the company.
The advantages of PUR adhesives in terms of strength and ability to work with difficult stocks are well known, added Henkel.
That development continues the evolution of the technology by increasing the green strength of bound books.
The new system uses UV to cure the books to about 80 per cent in just a few minutes, giving an easily handled book off the line.
Hard back books are superbly roundable in-line.
Henkel said that it has also long maintained a policy of developing and maintaining good relations with co-suppliers, such as the printing and application equipment suppliers so important to the graphics industries.
Henkel has held a strong position within bookbinding and flexible packaging throughout mainland Europe and the acquisition of Sovereign will help it to develop its British market, it believes.
Of the bookbinders in Germany thought to be using PUR spine adhesives, it is claimed that 90 per cent are supplied by Henkel.
In the narrow web area, Henkel offers a range of pressure sensitive adhesives, UV silicon release coatings and varnishes both to label stock manufacturers and for application in-line.
Sovereign is an American adhesives and coatings specialist and entered the UK market in 2000 through the purchase of Croda Adhesives.
Croda was a business that held a strong global position within print graphics, especially in book and magazine binding and flexible packaging.
Bookbinding requires a wide variety of adhesives and it remains the main user of 'animal' or 'jelly' glue, particularly for hardback book production, as well as a variety of hot melt spine and side adhesives, from low cost, high speed types for high volume magazine production through to PUR and water based adhesives for book production and lamination.
Flexible packaging features large web printing presses running packaging films at hundreds of metres a minute that require very specialised adhesives for in-line lamination.
Croda also developed coldseal adhesives for confectionery packaging from the 1980s.
Henkel and Sovereign's investment has brought a new products to the UK for the first time, such as specialist UV curing coatings to provide special effects, including high build pseudo-embossed, thermochromic and glow-in-the-dark effects, as well as specialist printable adhesives that can be used in-line to make new direct mail concepts possible.
The American direct mail market is highly developed and Sovereign has been a key player within it, including being the world's biggest producer of UV cured gloss varnish, with around half of the vast US market, said the company.
The influx of extra finance allowed the main production site at Newark to be developed, new production facilities commissioned, and new products introduced.
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