Uptodate And Hot
Indigenous adhesive for bottle labels
Uptodate Plastics and Packagings Private Limited, a leading hot melt manufacturer in the country and one of the largest suppliers of hot melt adhesives to the automobile industry in India, recently succeeded in developing hot melt adhesive for glued labels. The old technology of using heat shrinkable labels on packaged water bottles and aerated water bottles are being discarded in preference to glued labels.
Currently there are about 70 glue-labelling machines installed in the country. While initially these machines were imported, they have now been developed indigenously and are being successfully used commercially. Such machines can package 60 – 100 bottles per minute.
Vishal Dev, Director, Uptodate Plastics and Packagings Private Limited, says, “The gluing in this application is done by hot melt adhesive. This hot melt adhesive has to be specially tailor made for high-speed application.” He also claims, “Successful trials have been conducted with our hot melt adhesive by both machine manufacturer as well as users. The product is already in commercial use. It has been observed that this hot melt adhesive has also shown certain advantages over the imported hot melt adhesive in use.”
This hot melt adhesive is a low application temperature hot melt adhesive based on a special polymer that provides performance and process advantages in comparison to current hot melt formulations used for PET bottle labelling.
It has a number of special features: Its formulation is a clear and clean-running hot melt adhesive, which is char-free resulting in savings in maintenance expenses, such as cleaning and replacing filters and nozzles. The product does not form angel hair or spider webs.
The low density of polymer has helped formulate this hot melt adhesive with a lower density. Lower density means higher mileage resulting in increased yield per kg of adhesive. This hot melt adhesive has a relative density of 0.86 as compared to 0.97 of conventional commercially available hot melt adhesives used for PET bottle labelling.
It exhibits exceptional performance at both ends of the temperature scale. This is an ideal choice for freezer exposure. Seal failure rates are appreciably lower.
The polymer used does not contain any acidic groups and thus the products using this polymer have shown much higher heat stability and offer better colour. There is no need to change the adhesive in the tank and the lack of odour and smoke improves work place conditions.
“This new technology has resulted in an appreciable cost saving for the manufacturers. Every large manufacturer of packaged drinking water/aerated drinks has either fully shifted to this new technology or is in the process of doing so,” concludes Vishal Dev.
