FEATURE

By Brian Flaherty, Managing Director of NextGen Adhesives.

Applying the tool of custom formulation of adhesives can help companies address supply chain and raw materials sourcing challenges.

NextGen Adhesives is a manufacturer of a wide range of adhesives serving the electronic, fiber optic, and medical industries. The company has been in business for over 15 years, and in that time, it has seen many changes in both the supplier and competitor landscape. However, the changes that NextGen Adhesives has witnessed since the COVID-19 pandemic have been monumental.

On the supply chain side, raw materials are not only significantly more expensive, but suppliers also require much larger minimum purchases with respect to both a dollar minimum as well as a package size minimum. For example, a raw material previously available in a 5 lb pail must now be purchased in a 500 lb drum.

Lead times for raw materials have also increased. In fact, for a period, in late 2019 and 2020, many raw materials were not available at all due to force majeures. Because of these supply chain issues, some adhesive companies are no longer able to continue to provide the same product offering. Companies are rationing product lines and discontinuing products because they are not able to source the raw materials they need to produce their product.

One way to address the inability to source the correct raw materials is to formulate offsets to discontinued products. One of NextGen’s core capabilities is to custom formulate an adhesive solution for a specific customer application. Creating custom formulations involves gaining an understanding of key properties required in the handling and in the final cured performance of the adhesive. Next, formulating expertise is employed to provide a customized solution for that specific application. This same approach can be used to formulate an offset to a product that has been discontinued.

Recently, NextGen formulated an offset for a room-temperature-curable, optically-clear adhesive for a lens bonding application. The critical properties for the adhesive were the ability to cure without heat, to flow sufficiently to wet a glass substrate (viscosity 500-1000 cps), and to provide a cured hardness of 80D minimum. The hardener of the qualified adhesive had been discontinued and was no longer available. The hardener was critical to achieving all four properties: color, hardness, viscosity, and cure temperature. NextGen formulated three alternatives utilizing different hardener formulation packages utilizing its existing inventory of raw materials. Free evaluation samples were provided to the customer for qualification based on their specific requirements. The customer selected the formulation with the best performance, and NextGen now supplies it, resolving a potentially significant supply chain issue.

NextGen’s ability to provide this service is driven by its combined 75 years of experience in the adhesive industry. The NextGen technical team understands the important adhesive properties for many applications and has developed longstanding relationships with raw material suppliers around the world. The company may have a readily available offset from its existing product line or formulation library. This fast turnaround could be be key to ensuring continuous supply and preventing a client from facing a line-down situation.

Supply chain issues have improved in the past 6-8 months; however, issues with respect to lead times, minimums, and availability from suppliers are still prevalent, which ultimately impact product offerings in the marketplace. The past three years have reinforced the need for companies to be flexible and nimble. Many executives have learned that without that flexibility, they will not be successful as new challenges arise. Custom formulating is a critical tool companies can use to create flexibility within their organization, keep production going even when key materials are unavailable, and respond quickly when customer needs change.