Henkel Adhesive Technologies India Pvt. Ltd., a subsidiary of Henkel AG & Co. KGaA, is one of the global leaders in adhesive, sealant and specialty coating manufacturing. In an interview with B2B Purchase, Pradhyumna Ingle gives an overview of Indian business, products portfolio and procurement-related challenges.
Globally, Henkel is one of the leading players in adhesive and sealants. Brief us on your Indian business. Henkel is the global market leader in adhesives, sealants and surface treatments for consumers, craftsmen and industrial applications. This 130 years old company is now spread across 120 nations, with 47,000 employees, 170 manufacturing locations and 10 R&D sites.
Henkel Adhesive Technologies India Pvt. Ltd. is a subsidiary of Henkel AG & Co. KGaA, Germany. Headquartered in Mumbai, Henkel has a long tradition of a well balanced portfolio of international, regional and local brands. Henkel adhesive products provide solutions for the whole spectrum of applications, from anaerobic adhesives, cyanoacrylate adhesives, silicone sealants, polymer composites, solvent based, solvent free to cold seal laminating adhesives used in flexible packaging industry. Henkel solutions are used in diverse segments ranging from manufacturing, electronics, automotive, aerospace to biomedical industries.
Well-known brands in India include Loctite, Teroson, Bonderite, and Technomelt & Aquence.What are the products and solutions you offer in India? Henkel has a wide portfolio of adhesives, sealants and specialty coatings that have been specifically designed to meet the requirement of a large variety of industrial needs. These products are a technologically advanced replacement for conventional methods of bonding, sealing & surface protection. Our products meet the design requirements, provide better performance, increase reliability and are more cost effective.
We have solutions that make industrial manufacturing and maintenance more reliable and cost effective eg. thread-locking, thread-sealing, retaining, gasketing, bonding, instant bonding, flexible bonding, protective coatings, lubricating, potting and encapsulating, floor coating, mould release, dispensing solutions etc.
Assembly solutionsAny conventional method of fastening / bonding / sealing two substrates can be replaced by Loctite Solutions. For example, Loctite Threadlockers can be used to fix nuts and bolts together instead of mechanical fasteners like washers etc. The advantage of this is that being liquid anaerobic products, the Loctite thread lockers can fill in 100 per cent gaps between metal substrates and ensure 100 per cent bonding. With no gaps there is less chance of corrosion leading to increased reliability. Since the liquid can be applied in any shape or form there is no need to stock up on inventory of different sizes of mechanical fasteners for different bolt sizes thus leading to saving sin inventory costs. 100 per cent bonding also ensures higher locking strength thus reducing the need for frequent tightening and saving crucial labour cost and time.Maintenance & repair solutionsWe have specialised solutions for maintenance and repair of all industrial equipment. These solutions offer wear, corrosion and chemical attack resistance at broad temperature ranges and operational conditions. Loctite also offers threadlockers, retaining compounds, gasketing compounds etc for re –assembly of equipment. For example, in industrial pumps we have more than 17 applications right from rotor to shaft assembly using Loctite 638 / 648 to rebuilding worn shafts using Loctite Superior Metal. We also have Loctite thread sealants and gasket makers that can make the pump assembly leak proof and work as single integral equipment. The advantage offered by Loctite is versatile, complete end to end solutions that can offer better protection and reliability to industrial equipment than any conventional solution at lesser cost to the customer. This is the value that Loctite technology offers and combined with our application know how we are able to be technology partners for our customers across industry segments.
All Loctite solutions ensure that our customers get the best performance, increase reliability and productivity at lower costs.
Adhesives are becoming a rapidly growing trend in the industrial sector. How do you see the changing role of adhesives in construction industry?Henkel solutions are revolutionising conventional methods of industrial or construction equipment assembly and maintenance. We believe in customer awareness and education to bring about this change. We train more than 1 million users, customers or applicators every year to make them comfortable in switching their assembly and maintenance procedures to Loctite technology solutions that help them save costs, increase reliability and productivity.What makes your technology innovative? Our focus on customer centric product development and application coupled with our R&D prowess is what truly makes our technologies innovative.
We are the global pioneers in adhesive technologies. We are the first to come up with anaerobic technology. Our products are known for their quality and performance and consistency. We globally have 10 R&D centres to continuously innovate solutions to typical industrial assembly & maintenance issues with capability to partner from design stage.
We recently inaugurated our first Innovation Centre at Pune. The centre focuses on innovative technologies and solutions that will cater to customers across South Asia, Middle East and Africa.
What are the various trends in the adhesive and sealants technology? The focus on quality end-products is driving manufacturers in India towards quality components and assembly methods. What this means for adhesive and sealant sector is higher focus on quality and performance of their solutions that will ensure and add value to the customers’ end product reliability.
In an environment where manufacturing industries are trying to extract maximum performance from their existing plant set-up and increase their productivity, fast and reliable assemblies as well as maintenance solutions are the need of the hour.
Increasingly we find our customers switching from labour intensive, slow mechanical methods of manufacturing to fast and reliable methods using adhesives, sealants and specialty coatings.
Today we have adhesives that can replace welding, riveting, shrink fitting – all tedious, time consuming, labour intensive processes that a regular feature of any manufacturing set up. Our solutions can achieve better performance in lesser assembly time through easy to apply products with lesser labour and rework costs.How we can help our manufacturing industries in cost saving, reliability and productivity increase will be the key trend for growth of adhesive and sealant technology.
How challenging is the procurement-related activities in adhesives business? Very much! Adhesive manufacturing involves chemicals, a raw material category that is sensitive to storage conditions, shelf life and government policies. While some raw materials are abundantly available within India, there are specialty chemicals that need to be imported. It creates issues such as lead times, custom policies, shipment consolidation and currency exchange rate fluctuations etc. Specialty grades are also subject to availability issues and have very few vendor options.
This category also suffers price pressures as most adhesives and sealant use petrochemical products as a raw material. With every increase in crude oil prices, the costs of all subsequent raw material components for adhesive manufacturing go up leading to cost pressures.
However, in spite of these challenges, we ensure that we remain our customers’ technology partner of choice by using our global strength to deliver the best performance cost effective solutions.How effective is your supply chain? We have 10 manufacturing locations across India. We have a pan India sales team and base of distributors who can service the customers at their convenience. We also have a customer service team and a technical service team who can provide information on product and performance and resolve any issues on-site if needed. With SKU ranging from 50 ml to 200 kg, our supply chain team ensures our vast portfolio reaches our customers through the channel partners in proper conditions and on time.
Discuss on your long- and short-term objectives in this vertical.We are the world’s no 1 adhesive, sealant and specialty coating company and we want to retain as well as grow that position. Apart from an emphasis on strong organic growth, we also want to introduce innovative solutions in new markets and technology segments with our focus on R&D. We want to replace conventional methods of equipment assembly, maintenance and repair with Loctite solutions that can help our customers save costs, increase productivity and reliability of their products. We want to take our design stage partnership with our customers to the next level and help them build efficiency, sustainability and cost effectiveness into their products.