The bookbinding and graphic arts industries have a constant focus on improving quality, increasing efficiency, and reducing cost. There are also environmental considerations in the recycling of many bound books including telephone directories. The bookbinding adhesives market has recently been transformed with a new trend in the use of "cool" hot melt adhesives applied at significantly lower temperatures.

Hot melt adhesives and water-based adhesives are commonly used in bookbinding. Typical end uses include edition binding, library binding, soft-cover (paperback) binding, one-and, two-shot, and covers binding. For high quality durable bookbinding the use of curable polyurethane hot melts is recommended.
 
Solvent-based acrylic pressure sensitive adhesive is a major adhesive type used in graphic arts, especially for large surface area advertising. Normally, they are used unformulated, but Foral™ hydrogenated rosins can be added improve the adhesion to a variety of paper and filmic substrates.

Key technical requirements for packaging applications are:

• Precise viscosity control for exact adhesive coatings
• Open and setting time.
• Hot tack.
• Aging stability for improved clean machining.
• Lower application temperatures.
• Faster cooling for improved trimming.
• Fast page-pull strength development.
• Recyclability.

Kristalex™, Piccotex™, Regalite™ hydrocarbon resins, Eastotac™ resins and Foral™ hydrogenated rosin resins provide excellent performance in EVA and modified APO-based adhesives for bookbinding applications.