Footwear adhesive from GRECO

The recent development from Great Eastern Resins Industrial Co., Ltd (GRECO) in its shoe adhesive product portfolio is the introduction of 1K PUD primer, along with 1K PUD cement, to achieve automated shoe assembly. 

 

The company, which started out as one of the first shoe adhesive manufacturers in Taiwan, revealed that it must keep transforming and developing its adhesives to meet the future requirements of the market. In this sense, GRECO has gone through various important phases as it makes the shift in the market, while also witnessing the footwear industry evolving from being labor-intensive to adopting semi labor-dependent production line, moving toward a future where automated footwear manufacturing becomes a norm. 

 

 

Revolutionary changes accompany these developments; GRECO’s focal innovation for the future is to introduce sustainable adhesives that build on the foundation of water-based polyurethane dispersions. This series abandoned the requirement for using hardeners, while increasing the initial anti-tension strength. The series are widely utilized in automatic spraying techniques and used for assembling rubber, midsole cushion leather and fabrics. Along with the refined PUD, GRECO has introduced priming cement package by improving its reinforcement quality and material penetration, which allowed one side coating on mid-sole and outsole. The new characteristics will help producers to save on labor cost, processing cycle time as well as extra chemical consumption, according to GRECO.  

 

 

The goal of providing comprehensive adhesive packages for automated footwear production line is coming close for GRECO. Yet the true challenges lay in the application level, at present only a few suppliers with mass-production and highly automated equipment could integrate these high-performing adhesives. There is undeniably some distances until the footwear manufacturing industry can fully adopt automation without strains, and GRECO recognizes that. As the essence of the sector is highly diverse, manufacturers need to design components and equipment that would not sacrifice comfort or fashion to monolithic results. For the medium term, GRECO will continue to develop chemicals for automated application in order to take an active role in the future of footwear manufacturing.