Henkel's Consumer Brands division is now using its own bio-based hotmelt adhesive Technomelt Supra Eco to make the secondary packaging of its cleaning brands more sustainable.
Consumer goods and adhesives manufacturer Henkel has set itself the task of reducing emissions from raw materials and packaging by 30 per cent per tonne of product by 2030. This also applies to the Consumer Brands business sector, which offers a broad portfolio of consumer brands in the two core categories of hair care and laundry detergents and household cleaners. To efficiently seal the outer packaging of the company's own cleaning products, Henkel Consumer Brands already used an adhesive solution from Henkel's second business unit, Adhesive Technologies, in the past. Previously, the outer packaging was glued with a hot melt adhesive from the Henkel portfolio during erection. The detergents are then placed in the carton and adhesive is used again at the end of the production line to seal the carton.
It was precisely for this secondary packaging of its cleaning brands that Henkel Consumer Brands was now looking for a more sustainable solution to reduce CO2-emissions for the shipping packaging of a product. Here, too, the manufacturer found what it was looking for in-house: Since the beginning of the year the bio-based hotmelt adhesive Technomelt Supra Eco is used in a total of ten of the company's production lines, including the traditional brands Pril, Perwoll and Spee.
„Henkel is committed to a holistic approach to sustainability, so it made sense to replace the polyolefin-based adhesive with a bio-based one.“
Carsten Bertram, Head of Packaging Sustainability at Henkel Consumer Brands
The advantages of bio-based adhesives
The Technomelt Supra Eco is a bio-based product with a mixture of 30 per cent direct and 51 per cent ISCC-certified, mass-balanced bio-based raw materials. In the mass balance approach, fossil and renewable raw materials flow together into the existing production network. ISCC certification ensures that the proportion of certified material used in the production process can ultimately be correctly allocated to the products. Like many non-bio-based adhesives in the Henkel portfolio, the adhesive is Compatible with the paper recycling process and certified as such by cyclos-HTP.
The bio-based hotmelt is not only more sustainable, but also significantly more efficient. With a consumption of around 70 tonnes of adhesive per year the CO2-emissions at product level by around 200 tonnes can be used. Thanks to the very good adhesive performance, savings of up to 25 per cent in the application quantity are possible, with the same high-quality end result. This also means considerable financial savings, as significantly less adhesive is used. „The switch to the bio-based hotmelt was completely straightforward and had no impact on ongoing production,“ says Carsten Bertram.
Even more sustainable: the Technomelt Supra 079 Eco Cool
The latest addition to the product portfolio is the hotmelt Technomelt Supra 079 Eco Cool, which combines the proven benefits of the Supra Eco range with Supra Cool technology: It enables a processing temperature reduced by up to 40 degrees Celsius, This reduces the customer's energy consumption and improves safety in the workplace by reducing vapour exposure and the risk of burns. At the same time, it offers a Directly bio-based content of 49 per cent and 30 per cent ISCC-certified material an ecologically responsible alternative that minimises CO2-emissions by up to 32 per cent.
Source: Henkel
