CATIA’s Interview with Andrew Yen, Asia Pacific Marketing Manager,

Dow Chemical (China) Investment Co., Ltd.

CATIA: After the merge of Dow and DuPont, heritage Dow Elastomer Business now is part of Dow Packaging and Specialty Plastics Business. Would you please have a brief introduction of Dow Packaging and Specialty Plastics Business?

Andrew Yen: Dow Packaging and Specialty Plastics, a business unit of DowDuPont’s Materials Science division, combines core strengths of R&D, worldwide reach, broad product lines and industry expertise to deliver high performing technologies for end use markets in food packaging, personal hygiene, infrastructure, consumer goods and transportation. Dow Packaging and Specialty Plastics is one of the world’s largest producers of polyethylene resins, specialty resins and adhesives, and is a leading innovator and collaborator across the value chain on sustainable application development and circular economy life-cycle design for plastics.

Dow Packaging and Specialty Plastics is also the world’s largest producer of polyolefin elastomers (POEs) with manufacturing assets on three continents. We are committed to supplying the HMA industry with polymers that deliver an optimal combination of performance and affordability. Dow innovates continuously to deliver benefits to the entire value chain, addressing the evolving needs of the industry. Dow’s POEs create a sustainable difference serving markets ranging from packaging, hygiene disposables and labels to bookbinding and furniture.

Andrew Yen is the Marketing Manager in Asia Pacific for hot melt adhesives, and consumer durables markets such as footwear for Dow Packaging and Specialty Plastics. He is responsible for the implementation of regional strategies in alignment with global objectives in addition to the assessment of new focus areas for the business from a regional perspective.

CATIA: In the recent 20 years, AFFINITY™ GA, as the main product of Dow, has become one of the industrial benchmarks, enabling hot melt adhesive manufacturers to design and produce the metallocene polyolefin hot melt adhesive with high performance and low cost. Would you please tell us what the advantages of this polymer compared with EVA are?

Andrew Yen: Dow's AFFINITY™ GA metallocene polyolefin elastomer is a low molecular weight olefin random copolymer made with Dow's unique INSITE technology using metallocene catalyst to polymerize ethylene and octene as monomers. AFFINITY™ GA has a low glass transition temperature, which makes AFFINITY™ GA based polyolefin hot melt adhesives having better low temperature bonding properties than EVA based hot melt adhesives. Metallocene polyolefin has a much lower density than EVA, hence polyolefin hot melt adhesive can seal more cartons than same quantity of EVA based hot melt adhesive. Because the structure of metallocene polyolefin is pure hydrocarbon and does not contain any unsaturated double bond, the thermal stability of metallocene polyolefin is much better than EVA. Due to the vinyl acetate component, EVA has a distinct acetic acid odor at elevated temperatures. Metallocene polyolefin has very low odor due to its pure hydrocarbon structure. In addition, metallocene catalyst allows better control of the molecular weight distribution of the polymer and the distribution of the comonomer on each polymer chain. AFFINITY™ GA has a narrower molecular weight distribution and a more uniform distribution of comonomers per polymer chain than EVA produced via conventional Zeigler-Natta catalyst. The narrow molecular weight distribution makes the processing of polyolefin hot melt adhesive much better than EVA based hot melt adhesive. The tailing and stringing phenomenon will not occur. The uniform distribution of the comonomer results in less fluctuation of bonding performance of the hot melt adhesive.

CATIA: How’s China's hot melt adhesive market different from the international market?

Andrew Yen: The evolution of the global hot melt adhesive industry has been driven by a number of trends. Today’s faster paced lifestyles and consumers’ demographics have resulted in major changes in the way we prepare and consume our food. We are living longer, and the increased urbanization and enhanced purchasing power have increased the demand for disposable products and more convenient packaging.

Global demand for hot melt adhesive is clearly growing faster than general demand for adhesive, and this is also the case in China and the broader Asia Pacific region. While these demands are similar to the global hot melt adhesive market, China market also shows some difference from the international market. In the past, food safety, health and comfort are highly valued in Europe and North America, but are not in China. People in China used to care more about cost and price. However, in the past few years, with the improvement of everyone's awareness, China market is now paying more and more attention to food safety, health and comfort. China’s dynamic markets are experiencing increased overall demand for higher performance yet affordable and economic adhesive solutions.

CATIA: Would you introduce in more details on the Dow's successful experience in serving China's hot melt adhesive market and what platforms are available to provide technical supports?

Andrew Yen: China is indeed a critical market for us within the Asia Pacific region and we are committed to maintaining a long term presence in this dynamic and fast growing market. We have a R&D center focusing on the application development of hot melt adhesive in Shanghai. The Shanghai Dow Center (SDC) is the business and innovation hub for Dow in the Asia Pacific region and is also Dow’s largest integrated R&D center worldwide, bringing together corporate R&D expertise with market-focused application development. Dow has been offering metallocene polyolefin (MPO) to the hot melt adhesive market for more than a decade. AFFINTY™ GA Polyolefin Elastomers is a household name for the hot melt adhesive industry and has been adopted and recognized by many hot melt adhesive producers and food brand owners.

The Chinese market will benefit from reliable and secure feedstock supplies from Dow’s manufacturing sites across the world, including differentiated, high performance materials to be produced at Dow’s Gulf Coast facilities. Those facilities leverage cost-advantaged feedstocks available from increasing supplies of shale gas in North America. 

CATIA: China's adhesive and tape industries are vigorously advocating and promoting the environmental friendly actions of the entire industrial chain. As the leading international adhesive enterprise and raw material supplier, what kind of green products and solutions will Dow provide for hot melt adhesive industry?

Andrew Yen: As one of the world’s leading materials science companies, Dow is committed to using science-based solutions and acting collaboratively to help lead the transition to a more sustainable society. Now Dow is serving metallocene polyolefin elastomers for China hot melt adhesive industry. These metallocene polyolefin elastomers, including AFFINITY™ GA, AFFINITY™ GP, ENGAGE™, INFUSE™ and VERSIFY™, are more environmental friendly than other raw materials, such like EVA, SBC, etc. Polyolefin Elastomers utilize less energy to produce and produce less CO₂ comparing to EVA and SBC. Polyolefin elastomers are also able to provide low odor hot melt adhesive formulations and generate less waste during the application.

Dow has a legacy of innovation, leadership and action in sustainability. As we look ahead, we are committed to going beyond our current capabilities and the reach of our products and solutions. We pursue game-changing collaboration opportunities to set a higher bar for social and environmental progress. We aim to advance the well-being of humanity by helping lead the transition to a sustainable planet and society. Today Dow mainly participates in the packaging and hygiene hot melt adhesive markets. In the future, we are not only developing new products and solutions for above mentioned two applications, but also working closely with our partners to expand our participation in other applications, such as woodworking, labels and so on.

CATIA: What is your primary reason for participating in and sponsoring the China Hot-Melt Adhesives Forum? And what are you most looking forward to at this year’s event?

Andrew Yen: Dow is pleased to sponsor and participate in this year’s China Hot-Melt Adhesives Forum again. China is a critical market for us from the size of opportunity and as a source of innovation. The event is a great platform to exchange with partners in the hot melt adhesive value chain on a diverse range of critical topics for the hot melt adhesive market in China. We are looking forward to meeting other participants and to discussing ways we can work more closely together to drive innovation and provide responses to the challenges facing our industry.