Empowering Your Innovation: Bostik’s Nuplaviva™ Renewable Adhesives

Breathe new life into your products! That’s the idea behind Bostik’s Nuplaviva™ series of renewably sourced adhesive solutions for disposable hygiene.

According to Christophe Morel-Fourrier, Bostik Nonwoven’s Global Marketing Manager for Market Insights and Sustainable Innovation, ‘We wanted an adhesive featuring renewably sourced materials. Now we have three … and more are on the way.’

Nuplaviva™ offers an easy way for hygiene producers like you to incrementally and positively make renewable changes in your baby care, period care, and adult incontinence products. It also allows you to maintain processability, product integrity, and consumer confidence.

That’s great news for the industry and the planet. But just how did the Nuplaviva™ series come about?
 

Creating a more renewable adhesive

‘We kicked off the product development discussion in late 2019,’ explains Morel-Fourrier. The conversation began as a result of the strong commitment Bostik and Arkema has to sustainability and corporate social responsibility (CSR). In addition to examining our operations, we considered how we could make a difference through our product line. Reducing dependence on fossil resources, we knew, would help ease negative impacts on the environment. At the same time, manufacturers—including our customers like you—were looking for solutions to help make products more sustainable.

Our new product development (NPD) process began with the concept phase. ‘The goal—an adhesive with renewably sourced raw materials—was fairly straightforward,’ says Morel-Fourrier, who also has extensive experience as an R&D scientist. ‘To make that happen, we needed input from many areas.’

The NPD team included representatives from Marketing, Applied Technologies (i.e., tech support), Product Line Managers, Purchasing, Production, and Regulatory. ‘We were going to be working with new materials. It was important that we were meticulous and prepared for every aspect from start to finish,’ Morel-Fourrier adds.
 

Enabling your sustainability goals

We asked ourselves: In which area(s) could we have the greatest impact for you and your products? Construction adhesives were the place to start. They have more applications within the diaper or pad. They are also used in more types of products than elastic or pad attachment adhesives. These two facts together meant that any incremental improvements in sustainability from our adhesives would have a more significant effect.

In early 2020, the NPD team began looking at typical construction adhesive ingredients and determining where we could substitute to renewably sourced materials.  ‘The raw materials,’ Morel-Fourrier notes, ‘had to be currently available, and—this was particularly important—we weren’t willing to sacrifice performance or processability.’

The scientist chuckles as he adds, ‘These were entirely new materials for many of us. It was a bit like cooking when you aren’t familiar with the ingredients. I kept going back to my chemistry books and reference materials.’ The team had to ask questions ranging from ‘What will it smell like?’ to ‘Are there any health and safety implications?’ Each new ingredient also meant understanding additional regulations in the regions where our customers sold their products.
 

Supporting both CSR and processability: the best of both worlds

Thinking about our customers’ needs, the team realised that it made sense to offer a series of adhesive solutions. Nuplaviva™ 50 and Nuplaviva™ 75 were the initial results. And, true to the team’s concept, switching to the Nuplaviva™ series adhesives has minimal impact on processability. Manufacturers can use application systems already in place. The adhesives also have wide operational windows for application temperatures, adhesive add-ons, and open times. This makes it easy to be more socially responsible whilst enjoying a smoother transition to Nuplaviva™.

As to choosing a name for the series, the process was more complicated than the team originally expected. According to Paul Andrews, Global Marketing Manager of Bostik Nonwovens, ‘We eventually decided to create a name that embodies our vision for the adhesives. Nuplaviva™ represents giving renewable resources a new way to be useful, a “new play on life.”’
 

The addition of Nuplaviva™ 90 wetness indicator

‘At the time we launched our construction adhesives, we were already working on a hot-melt wetness indicator,’ Morel-Fourrier notes. As with Nuplaviva™ 50 and Nuplaviva™ 75, the team wanted to ensure that the new adhesive would meet all the standard criteria, using renewable materials. What they created was Nuplaviva™ 90, a hot-melt wetness indicator with 90% renewably sourced ingredients. Its benefits include:

• Rapid response with a clear, obvious colour change
• Excellent resistance to humidity
• Compatible with a wide range of core wraps and SAP ratios
• Meets the demand for low product odour

 

The future of renewable adhesives for the disposable hygiene industry

What’s next in the series? ‘We’ll take what we’ve learned to expand Nuplaviva™ in two directions,’ Morel-Fourrier explains. ‘On one axis, we will be creating options with increasing renewable content. On the other, we’ll expand to other applications, such as elastic and pad attachment.’

Looking back, Morel-Fourrier considers the effort well worth it. ‘It’s quite satisfying, knowing that we are doing our part to make disposable hygiene more sustainable. In time, every change, no matter how small, adds up. Through Nuplaviva’s renewably sourced adhesive solutions, we can work together to enable a more sustainable disposable hygiene industry.’
Nuplaviva™ adhesive solutions … enabling your next level of sustainability to come to life. And we love that. After all, your world is our world.
 

Responsibly for Hygiene. Naturally, from Bostik.

Additional information on the Nuplaviva™ series is available through our recorded webinar, ‘Adhesives and Sustainable Technologies’. It is also a focus of an  episode in our podcast series, ‘Attached to Hygiene’. Subscribe today to ensure you don’t miss it!
 

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