It is a special company with a special founder personality. And Label-Experts is pleased to introduce cph to you in this exclusive interview.

There is sustainability and sustainability. And innovation and innovation. But there are very few entrepreneurs who can manage innovations as sustainably as Gerwin Schüttpelz’ cph. And above all, it is a question of real sustainability.

Adhesives, an essential part of the packaging industry, be it folding cartons or labels. This is the core business of the cph group. Water-based adhesives and hot melt adhesives.

And the new innovation is a real coup. 60% water savings and a 60% reduction in CO2 emissions during transport. This is a new industry benchmark on an international level.

 

 

The cph Way since 1983

cph Deutschland Chemie GmbH started very early to develop biodegradable labelling adhesives (since 1983) and has always followed the path of bringing the “most environmentally friendly products” to the market. cph was the first company to offer labelling adhesives free of phenolic compounds, heavy metals, and formaldehyde, and introduced labelling adhesives free of borax and zinc.

In the field of hotmelt adhesives (HOTMELTS), cph proved its pioneering position already 8 years ago by developing the first hotmelts “COMMITMELT-series” based on biodegradable raw materials and free of mineral oil components.

cph Deutschland Chemie GmbH is rewarded for its efforts with numerous awards, including recently

• TOP-Innovator 2018 (Group of the 100 most innovative companies in Germany) and the
• Excellence Award 2020, which recognises cph’s consistent efforts on environmental management

 

We never stop our efforts to live up to our name as a pioneer in environmentally friendly adhesives! We started to think IN CIRCULATION, to move from linear (which is based on biodegradable and/or environmentally friendly products) value creation to circular value creation. Unfortunately, we have not yet reached the point where we can basically manage to preserve used materials by reusing them in the system. However, it is worth finding sources of raw materials along the value chain, collecting them, treating them, and integrating them into new production processes. Around 58 million tonnes/a of waste come from industry and commerce.

Gerwin & Andreas Schüttpelz

REGAIN – Nomen est Omen

The production of French fries, potato chips and other potato products generates huge amounts of starch-containing wastewater. Novidon succeeds in recovering and treating the potato starch contained in the wastewater. cph Deutschland Chemie GmbH is Novidon’s exclusive partner to develop label adhesives for the food industry (mainly the beverage industry) from this “waste starch from wastewater” (Side Stream Starch).

Starch originates from potatoes and is used for several applications. The side stream potato starch produced by Novidon is used in food, wall paper paste, paper bag and labelling adhesives (in exclusive cooperation with cph Deutschland Chemie GmbH) and drilling starch. There are roughly two ways to produce starch. The first route is starch processed in a traditional way from the whole potato. Novidon is using another route. She mines starch from process water of producers of crisps and French fries. Which means that the starch is based on a co-product. So no extra potatoes are grown for the starch produced by Novidon. [Editor’s note: NOVIDON, Dutch manufacturer of starch products]

 

Lower carbon footprint side stream starch caused by use of co-product

 

Side stream potato starch has a lower environmental impact than traditional potato starch

Circularity; finally no lip service, but lived reality

In some places there is much talk about it; but at cph circularity is taken seriously and truly lived.

 

 

Produce, use and dispose? Dispose? Isn’t it just a better word for throwing away?

The magic formula is called: Circular Value Chain. That means quite simply: Used raw materials are collected, prepared, and integrated into new production processes.

Andreas Schüttpelz

In our globalised economy, many companies work with this value creation logic. They process raw materials into products, which consumers buy and throw away after use. Meanwhile, this trend has been outdated. Everyone is making great effort to “dispose” of things in a meaningful way, namely, to get the things recycled. But worldwide the amount of waste is increasing, and the use of recycled material is still relatively limited (raw materials are also becoming increasingly scarce). This form of economy is coming up more and more to its limit… not only as a result of environmental protection.

The above-mentioned first steps not only reduce waste (in the form of polluted wastewater during potato processing) but also saves huge wastewater costs (industrial wastewater treatment is charged based on polluting load). Even more interesting is the C02 Footprint. The LCA shows the enormous reduction of the carbon footprint compared to the use of starch directly extracted from the potato. In addition, there is an increasingly critical view of the fact that it makes more sense to use the potato as a foodstuff than to process them industrially to produce starch.

This impressive C02 reduction can be achieved mainly because of the material itself, but also because of the proximity of raw material procurement. The processing of the Side Stream Starch into a finished labelling adhesive is carried out at the cph production facility in Essen, Germany, under particularly favourable carbon footprint conditions:

 

86% of the products manufactured in cph premises in Essen are exported to almost 100 countries around the world. Here a weakness of the export nation Germany (not only for cph) is hidden: we, the industry,  also ship thousands of tons by trucks or, even more polluting, by ships.

When you ask Dr. Schüttpelz whether it would be possible to reduce carbon emissions on the customer/producer side, there is only one answer:

„No. We are going a significant step forward and are shifting production to countries where we deliver large tonnages in a special way. It has to be taken into consideration that labelling adhesives consist of about 60% water. If we manage to produce adhesives directly on site of the major customers, we will transport thousands of tons less water around the globe, not to mention the huge amount of (disposable) transport packaging.

We are working on the development of local production units that are able to produce high quality, environmentally friendly adhesives (e.g. adhesives from waste starch) on site, using the raw materials we supply. The savings effect of the C02 Footprint is therefore well over 60%, only in terms of transport and packaging.“

Once again cph is breaking new ground and leaving old paths. And once again an entrepreneur from the small and medium-sized business sector proves how uniquely innovative he can be and make a great contribution to reducing emissions by simply being able to think outside the box. And that means courage, backbone and vision. And above all decency towards everything.

For further information: REGAIN: the new, true way of sustainable labelling Adhesive

 

About CPH

300 different adhesives for every customer requirement

For the last 40 years, cph Deutschland Chemie has been a privately owned, medium-sized chemical company specializing in the development, manufacture and sale of industrial adhesives. And because we have the highest demands for ourselves, we offer products with the highest reliability in the application.

cph Deutschland Chemie is part of the internationally active cph group with production facilities in Germany and abroad. We cover all applications in the labeling industries on glass, PET, sheet, PVC, PE etc., with casein, starch, hot melt and dispersion adhesives. In addition, there are numerous applications of paper/cardboard binding in the packaging industries, wood and film lamination in the furniture industry and in pallet stabilization. The cigarette industry also relies on cph, as do numerous manufacturers of baby diapers.

Day by day, we find new solutions for various challenges. Our engineers, chemists and physicists are highly qualified and advise our customers on complex problems.

We export our products to over 100 countries. In the field of label glue, we are a world market leader: about 10,000 bottles are labeled with our adhesives every second.

www.cph-group.com/en/