For many manufacturers, hotmelt adhesive is seen as a commodity — just another line on the cost sheet. But what if that line is costing you far more than it should? Many businesses overspend on adhesives without even realising it, because the real costs are hidden in waste, downtime, or poor performance.
If you’re a buyer of hotmelt adhesives and you’ve been challenged to reduce your spend, then this article is for you.
We’ve worked with many customers who were under the same pressure, and we’ve helped them reduce adhesive costs significantly without compromising quality or production reliability.
By the time you finish this article, you’ll have a clearer understanding of where the savings really are — and some practical steps you can take right away.
Adhesives might make up only a small percentage of total packaging cost — but their impact on efficiency is huge. The wrong adhesive, or the wrong application method, can:
Increase consumption by 20–50%.
Cause line stoppages from stringing or blocked nozzles.
Lead to rejected packs and rework from weak bonds.
Reducing adhesive spend isn’t just about buying cheaper glue. It’s about reducing waste, downtime, and hidden costs that directly hit your bottom line.
Before looking at savings, it helps to know the main adhesive families:
EVA (Ethylene Vinyl Acetate): The traditional workhorse, widely available and low cost.
EBA (Ethylene-n-Butyl Acrylate): A step up from EVA, with better adhesion and hot tack.
Metallocene Hotmelts: Advanced, clean-running adhesives that deliver consistent bonds and reduce consumption.
Each type has its place, but the cheapest option on paper isn’t always the most cost-effective in practice.
At first glance, EVA looks attractive — low price per kilo, widely available. But the hidden truth is in how much adhesive you actually need to get the job done.
EVAs often require higher coat weights to achieve the same bond strength.
They can string and char, creating waste and downtime.
On average, only 70–75% of an EVA bead wets out properly on both flaps.
By contrast, metallocene hotmelts wet out 95–99%, and they go directly from liquid to solid without the “paste phase” that causes stringing. This means you can achieve the same bond strength with up to 50% less adhesive.
So while the kilo cost of EVA may look cheaper, the overall consumption and hidden costs make metallocenes the more economical choice in most packaging applications.
The first step in reducing adhesive spend is to understand how much you’re really using — and wasting. A simple coat weight analysis can help:
Measure adhesive application weight per pack (g/m).
Multiply by the number of packs produced.
Compare across different adhesives and temperatures.
This gives a clear, data-driven picture of your actual adhesive consumption. From there, you can trial metallocene products and see how much less you need to use to achieve the same or better results.