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Henkel achieves breakthrough in synthetic labeling adhesives

Thursday 09. December 2010 - Innovative labeling adhesives with no limitations

With its Optal XP product series, Henkel has developed a completely new generation of synthetic adhesives for glass bottle labeling that offers an excellent performance spectrum.
The brewing industry has relied for many years on tried and trusted waterbased casein adhesives to label its glass bottles. Constantly rising prices for casein are, however, driving up the costs for these conventional labeling adhesives. Given that casein is a raw material derived from cow’s milk, the beverage industry’s adhesives budgets are also affected by sharp periodic swings. The logical alternative is to use adhesives based on synthetic polymers, which offer the additional advantages of longer storage stability and lower consumption. Up to now, however, the products available on the market showed certain limitations when compared directly with casein adhesives.
Henkel has now achieved a technological breakthrough by introducing its new casein-free product series, Optal XP. For the first time, synthetic adhesives are proving a high performance. In extensive long-term tests, they satisfied high customer expectations. In addition to their excellent wet tack, the synthetic Optal XP adhesives also exhibit good adhesion to chilled glass surfaces. The brewing industry can therefore turn to a powerful and economical range of products that cover the entire spectrum of bottle labeling needs, including sophisticated adhesive solutions with high ice-water and condensation water resistance. Moreover, the prices of the raw materials used are less volatile than that of casein, thus reducing the budget planning stress for bottling plants.
The new-generation Optal XP adhesives also offer further economic and ecological processing advantages when it comes to labeling re-usable bottles. Deficits previously experienced with casein-free labeling adhesives have been successfully overcome through significantly improved cleaning and wash-off performance.