H.B. Fuller Company (Kömmerling)

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• Did you know2024

  H.B. Fuller's Kömmerling subsidiary (acquired 2019) manufactures the hermetic edge sealants that seal argon or krypton gas inside double-pane and triple-pane insulated glass windows — but the same Kömmerling brand and manufacturing platform also produces the lid sealing compounds applied to food and beverage metal can closures that hermetically seal the contents. The butyl and polysulfide rubber sealant chemistry that prevents argon gas from leaking out of a window over 30 years is derived from the same compound technology Kömmerling developed for food can lid gaskets — where the same rubber compound prevents oxygen and bacteria from entering canned food for multi-year shelf life. Kömmerling's compound sealing technology is simultaneously in: every high-performance double-pane window installed in Europe and North America (construction industry), every steel food can of tomatoes, beans, and soup sealed with a Kömmerling compound lid (food industry), and aerosol can closures (personal care and household products). A disruption at Kömmerling's Pirmasens, Germany compound manufacturing facility would affect window energy performance, canned food shelf life, and aerosol product sealing simultaneously.

  Kömmerling Chemische Fabrik GmbH (H.B. Fuller) ↗

• Concentration2023

  H.B. Fuller is the world's largest supplier of hot melt adhesives for disposable diaper manufacturing. The global disposable diaper market (Procter & Gamble Pampers, Kimberly-Clark Huggies, Essity Libero, Unicharm, Kao Merries) requires hot melt adhesive at every diaper manufacturing line — bonding the elastic waistband, fastening tabs, attaching the acquisition distribution layer, and laminating the topsheet to the core. H.B. Fuller's HHC segment adhesives run on diaper manufacturing lines in every major producing country. Diaper manufacturing is also unusual in that line speeds are extremely high (600-800 diapers per minute per line) and adhesive application systems are highly optimized for specific adhesive rheology — switching hot melt adhesive supplier requires requalification of every application nozzle and temperature setting on every line, a multi-month process. P&G, Kimberly-Clark, and Essity each have H.B. Fuller as a qualified and likely sole-sourced adhesive supplier for specific diaper product lines.

  H.B. Fuller Company ↗

• Origin2023

  H.B. Fuller Company was founded in 1887 by Harvey Benjamin Fuller in Chicago, originally selling wallpaper paste in the post-Civil War building boom. The company grew through the 20th century as an industrial adhesives supplier, reaching $1B in revenue by the late 1990s. The 2017 acquisition of Royal Adhesives & Sealants for $1.575B — financed with significant debt — was the defining event of the modern company, doubling H.B. Fuller's engineering adhesives capabilities and bringing in aerospace, electronics, and wind energy adhesive technologies that Royal had built through its own acquisition history. Royal's portfolio included adhesives for wind turbine blade manufacturing, spacecraft assembly, and FAA-qualified aviation structural bonds — capabilities that transformed H.B. Fuller from a general industrial adhesives company into a precision-engineered specialty adhesives company. The debt load from the Royal acquisition pressured H.B. Fuller through 2019-2021 but positioned them as one of the few adhesive companies that can simultaneously bond a diaper, a wind turbine blade, and an aircraft fuselage panel.

  H.B. Fuller Company ↗