Sustainable Success for Adhesives and Sealants through Biorenewable Feedstocks

For decades, the pine chemicals industry has used biorenewable feedstocks from both forests and factories to produce materials used by a variety of industries, including adhesives and sealants. From the forests, gum oleoresin is collected through the tapping of pine trees and refined into gum rosin and gum turpentine. In factories, crude tall oil (CTO), a mixture of fatty acids, rosin and other bio-materials, is made via the pulping process used by paper mills, and further refined through fractionation.

These substances are used to manufacture adhesives and sealants, as well as paper, paint, printing inks, soap, disinfectants, perfumes, flavors, fragrances and vitamins, to name a few. The gum resin industry is a multi-billion-dollar global business, with more than 1 million metric tons of products produced annually from the sticky substance.