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Solutions Made in Australia

One-component, polyurethane-based prepolymer adhesives are true all-rounders: Apart from providing high performance and a wide range of adhesion, they also open the door to countless new applications due to their ability to bond many different substrates. At Jowat Australia, they play a very special role in our day-to-day work.

Customer Magazine

Jowat SE’s Australian location in Ingleburn, just south of Sydney, now specializes in a range of these versatile, high-performance bonding solutions. Up until 2019, Jowat Australia mainly offered hot melt and dispersion adhesives. Then, the decision was made to focus on a new type of product. The change came just in time, as Managing Director Shane Devereaux explains: “At the end of March 2020, Australia closed its borders and initiated a lockdown due to the Covid-19 pandemic. In spite of these difficult circumstances, our technical account manager, Arne Haas, worked untiringly with his colleagues, Rod Vella and Andrew Waud, to install, commission and improve our polyurethane prepolymer manufacturing facilities. As a result of this, we were able to put them into operation six months later.”

Jowat Australia’s main market segment is timber construction, which has been hugely popular in Australia and New Zealand for many years. The benefits of load-bearing glulam construction in terms of environmental compatibility, safety and healthy living were recognized at an early stage. With impressive new wood-based buildings springing up everywhere, the industry has made a name for itself far beyond Australia’s borders, leading to more investment in the timber construction sector.

In-House Production

Until changes were made in the law in 2010, Jowat Australia specialized in offering phenolic resorcin-formaldehyde-based products. When the sale of PUR prepolymers was approved, this opened up a whole new world of opportunity for Jowat in the Australian market. As a result, the company started to import the proven and successful Jowapur® range from Swiss manufacturing location in Buchrain. However, the long freight journeys halfway around the world were a cause for concern, and a solution was required. “By commissioning our own in-house production plant, we have managed to overcome this issue and put ourselves in a position to cater to the Australian market more efficiently. Our locally manufactured products give us a unique selling point on the Australian market,” says Shane Devereaux. Jowat now sells these adhesives both in Australia and beyond, also catering to the New Zealand, Indonesian and Vietnamese markets. The 1C prepolymer adhesives are used for laminating and fingerjointing glued laminated timber, as well as in the production of plywood.

Tailored to the Needs of the Market

Since 2020, Jowat Australia has been manufacturing the main product range Jowapur® 681.xx and the thixotropics Jowapur® 677.xx and 676.xx in its own in-house production facility. With exclusive formulations such as Jowapur® 680.02 and 680.03, Jowat supplies bonding solutions for the jointing of 4-millimeter micro fingerjoints.

Read other interesting articles in our customer magazine.