Five Key Factors for Flexible Packaging Adhesives Purchase

As a flexible packaging company, adhesives are an important raw material. From the value of the materials it occupies, it accounts for about 1/8 to 1/10 of the cost of production materials. Therefore, attention should be paid to the procurement of adhesives, and the full use of the knowledge of adhesives to find adhesives suitable for different products can not only improve product quality, but also effectively reduce costs.

Although domestic adhesives have made great progress at present, most of the adhesives in daily use can be purchased from domestic manufacturers. However, for some demanding products, some imported adhesive products will still be used. At present, more import adhesive manufacturers used in the country are Japan Mitsui Takeda Chemical Industry Co., Ltd., Henkel Co., Ltd., Japan Toyo Ink Chemical Co., Japan Ink Chemical Co., and Norwich Co., Ltd. These manufacturers have obvious quality advantages in cooking food packaging, jelly sealing lid packaging, aluminum foil composite packaging, and of course the price is relatively high.

Compared with the purchase of raw materials for composite flexible packaging, adhesives are relatively complex and high-tech products. Therefore, the problems that are likely to arise in procurement are effectively avoided, and the company's production can be well avoided in terms of quality risk and efficiency.

Classification Purchase Adhesives

Divide all the products in your company into categories, describe the scope of use of different product categories, package contents, etc. Then, based on this information, determine which type of adhesive should be used. After such a determination, it is possible to contact the relevant adhesive manufacturer for purchase. In doing so, the benefits are obvious. First of all, after classifying the categories, the procurement of adhesives does not require the procurement of good quality but expensive products. Different adhesives can be purchased according to different material requirements. In fact, there is a big gap in the price of adhesives, and the price difference between products with different uses or qualities is more than 3 times. Therefore, it must be classified according to the actual product and process requirements to determine the appropriate adhesive.

Purchasing adhesives based on performance data

The most common problem with adhesives is that their adhesive strength cannot meet the requirements of the company. For this, it is difficult to solve the problem only by purchasing itself. It should be communicated with sufficient production and inspection and implemented according to certain procedures. Because of the inherent complexity of the adhesive, the same product is better used in a single manufacturer, and it cannot be proven that using it in another manufacturer will achieve the same result. In the same way, the same adhesive is better used on one product and it cannot be proved that it is good to use on another product. Therefore, for newly-developed adhesive suppliers, in addition to first obtaining technical support from suppliers, small-lot trials should be used for procurement. This is more convincing by examining the effect of the adhesive through a composite specific trial. Then according to the trial results to enter the next step, it is generally recommended to increase the number of trials, but also can not be completely used as a normal adhesive. Only after 2 to 3 different batches of trials can you decide how to purchase in batches. Of course, adhesives manufacturers are constantly improving their own level of technology and services. For some large adhesive manufacturers with strong technical strength, they will conduct composite tests before they leave the factory. According to the adaptation material described in the adhesive, a composite test was performed one by one, and various performance indexes of the composite film were tested. Only after the index of the composite film reached the expected requirements, the batch of adhesives was delivered. As a manufacturer of adhesives, it is necessary to make full use of the technical capabilities of adhesive manufacturers to obtain data on the performance of different adhesives. This can effectively select different types of adhesives and provide guidance for normal use. effect.

Special adhesive procurement

At present, many manufacturers have developed many targeted adhesives based on the composite flexible packaging market to improve the composite properties of certain packaging materials. For this, it should be fully utilized in procurement. From the current market point of view, there are special adhesives for nylon composites, special adhesives for aluminum foil composites, and adhesives for manufacturers that have been able to increase their peeling force. In addition, due to the effect of the contents of the package on the adhesive, it may cause problems with the peel strength of the package over time. Some manufacturers have developed foods for sour and hot food (such as pickles, mustard, etc.) and acidic foods (if juice , Jelly), high permeability media content (such as alcohol, toluene, etc.) adhesive, play a better effect. For these types of products, it is advisable to use special adhesives so that the quality is guaranteed.

Of course, the adhesives used in the packaging of some special products mentioned above are not all-purpose. Despite their “dedicated” characteristics, the requirements for packaging of these products are different from those of ordinary products. Therefore, how to more effectively purchase adhesives suitable for the packaging of these commodities is still an important issue for the packaging companies. Because these goods or the medium in which they exist are more erosive to the package, especially the effect of the adhesive is obvious. Therefore, it is advisable to fully communicate with customers and suppliers when purchasing these adhesives, and it is necessary to understand the extent to which these products exhibit different traits. For example, acidic foods should know the PH value of the food, the concentration of the medium of the penetrating goods, and the permeability in the end. Then, based on these data, we communicate with the suppliers of the binders to obtain the suppliers' cooperation and purchase the most suitable binder products.

For a company, there will certainly be many problems that cannot be solved in the production process. However, for flexible packaging companies, the most difficult problems are often concentrated in the process of compounding. As the process is affected, there are too many factors, and many are difficult to quantitatively analyze and control, making analysis difficult.

In fact, the large proportion of problems that occur in composite packaging is due to some problems in the material itself, or improper material selection and improper material matching. After our analysis, this proportion accounts for about 30% of all compounding problems. To solve these problems, a good idea is how to find a suitable adhesive product. This problem seems to be a very technical problem, but often many companies ignore the purchase of this link, the technical department to solve, but the results have little effect. At this time, procurement should actively participate in solving problems and jointly analyze the causes of these problems. Then return to the adhesive market to solve or improve these problems by choosing the right adhesive. For this, there are many successful cases. For example, by selecting different adhesives to solve composite wrinkling problems, odor problems, weather resistance problems, and the like.

How to reduce the purchase cost of adhesives

At present, due to the high price of world crude oil, various packaging manufacturers are reducing costs from various channels, and procurement is a very important part. Therefore, how to reduce costs for companies in procurement of adhesives is also a problem that must be fully considered. To reduce the cost of adhesives procurement, there are three ideas, one is to seriously shop around, buy in the same quality to lower prices; the second is to obtain the supplier's preferential policies through their own advantages in volume; third is based on different Packaging product structure, choose different grades of adhesive. For this, perhaps a good way for many companies to reduce the cost of adhesives, should pay attention. In general, for a two-layer composite or an ordinary three-layer composite film, the use of lower-grade adhesives is generally satisfactory, while the use of high-grade adhesives has excess quality. For demanding packaging products, it is necessary to purchase high-grade adhesives, which is also the need to ensure product quality. However, in fact, the price difference between different manufacturers of high-grade adhesives is also very large, and some even reach more than 20%, if the difference between imported products is even greater. We recommend that domestically produced adhesives do not use imported products as much as they can. If they do need to be imported, they must also carefully compare the products. In this way, we can guarantee the quality of the packaged product while also reducing the material cost.

How to solve adhesive hygiene problems

Health issues are an important issue that must be mentioned in the procurement of adhesives. Due to the very strict hygiene and safety of foods and medicines, a little care can lead to unqualified sanitary performance of the packaged products. For the health issue, there are two main aspects to be noted in the procurement process. First is whether the adhesive manufacturer has the corresponding health qualifications. Second, whether the adhesive product has passed the appropriate statutory inspection and is qualified. If these two aspects can be met, there will generally be no problem. Of course, for the newly used adhesives, we still recommend the ability to perform tests on the hygienic properties during the trial period. Another problem that is easily overlooked in health is the problem of residual solvents. In fact, the good or bad of the solvent of the adhesive itself will directly affect the residual solvent amount in the composite production. If the solvent of the adhesive itself is good, then the residual solvent of the produced package is low, whereas the residual solvent is high. How to choose a high release adhesive, first through the supplier's advice, the second is through its own test.

In short, the procurement of adhesives needs to be considered comprehensively, including material adaptability, cost-effectiveness, and impact on subsequent production. Only when these factors are comprehensively considered during procurement, can the problems be effectively avoided and the company can purchase suitable and inexpensive adhesive products.

Source: China Packaging