Inline & offline digital printing primers certified for use with HP Indigo presses.
Water-based overprint coatings increase durability and enhance the look & feel of inkjet-printed materials.
High-performance primers for inkjet that improve print quality & ink adhesion on film & paper.
Advanced materials designed to enhance the performance and processing of agricultural products.
Recyclable water-based coatings that confer high barrier to paper-based packaging and wraps.
Enhancing composite performance through optimized fiber-polymer interface adhesion
Water-based sizing solutions designed to optimize interfacial adhesion in composites using carbon fiber.
2030 Goals
Michelman is committed to sustaining our planet by continually reducing our footprint and bringing planet-positive solutions to the marketplace.
Sustainable Packaging
Future proofing, problem solving, and above all, collaborating. Our people, our planet, shaping the circular economy of tomorrow.
Thinking Ahead
The packaging industry must adopt more sustainable practices to combat the significant and growing impact of packaging waste.
News (Tuesday, 1 October 2024)
Bassetti provides an in-depth exploration of carbon fiber sizing benefits, production methods, and applications.
News (Wednesday, 25 September 2024)
Topics will include multiple paths to recyclability, requirements for compostability, and new possibilities with bio-based coatings.
News (Thursday, 22 August 2024)
Assessed for our approach to the environment, labor & human rights, sustainability, & ethics, we improved our score vs. the previous year.
Our corporate values are a testimony of our highest priorities as individuals and as a company.
Collaborating with like-minded partners to move industries forward.
Michelman is a global company with offices in the Americas, Asia and Europe.
Located all over the world, Michelman distribution partners have the expertise to help you win.
Rick Michelman recently discussed Sustainability with Lee Green, Innovation Research Interchange’s (IRI’s) Assistant Vice President, Strategic Communities, as part of IRI’s Sustainable Innovation podcast series.
Discussion highlights included the following:
At a high-level, we are pursuing two concurrent tracks to drive sustainability throughout our organization and our industry.
We understand the power of setting quantifiable goals for our sustainability initiatives and then assessing our progress towards achieving those goals.
At Michelman, we focus on the triple bottom line of People, Planet, and Profit. Other companies may engage in similar initiatives under the banner of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG).
In terms of measurement, there is progress that we can gauge through quantitative assessment and there is progress that is made by our enabling chemistries that is a bit harder to quantify. For the products that we manufacture, it is a straightforward calculation to report on the amounts of SoCs eliminated, reductions in energy consumption, and diminished use of water during our production process. It becomes a tad more tricky determining our environmental impact for those applications where we enable sustainable solutions—but where our contribution to the final product is a relatively low percentage of the total materials used in the complete product.
We recognize there is a need, or an inherent challenge, in calculating our contribution to sustainability in those instances mentioned above where our coatings are a relatively low percentage of the total materials used in the complete structure. Disposable food packaging provides an example of this challenge. Michelman manufacturers coatings that can be applied as a thin film on a piece of paper. This coated paper may be used as part of a food-service container for a take-out tray at a restaurant. Using this coated paper might enable the take-out tray to be recycled. In this example, the paper coating may be a relatively small part of the takeout container. But because the coating displaces the plastic lining that was used in earlier generations of the food-service container, the environmental benefit is multiplicative. It is challenging, in this instance, to precisely calculate our contribution to sustainability. We may know how many pounds or kilograms we sell of a product, but it is somewhat more challenging to translate that knowledge into a precise, quantifiable metric.
We have found that third-party validation by industry groups like Ecovadis and Biodegradable Products Institute (BPI) help the industry converge on a common set of standards, measurements, and vocabulary to frame and assess sustainability initiatives.
As a global manufacturer of sustainable solutions, we need to manage our development and production resources to ensure that our products are compliant to sustainability regulations within each country where our products are sold. Whether meeting regulatory requirements for Plastic Waste Management (PWM) in India, for Single Use Plastics Directive (SUPD) in the EU, or helping to lightweight automobiles to support meeting emissions requirements in the United States, we are continually faced with an evolving set of regulatory mandates.
We maintain close relationships with our customers and listen carefully to their needs. We consider the regulatory parameters in our customers’ countries of origin as well as the regulations in the countries that our customers conduct business. We empower our team members to not only anticipate and plan for upcoming regulatory changes, but also to keep our own organization perpetually agile so that we can quickly pivot to meet evolving requirements.
Listen to the IRI Podcast here:
IRI Podcast