Advances in Pre-Mixed and Frozen Adhesives – Appli-Tec Continues to Innovate

The recent hurricanes made many of us remember 2008 – when the greater New England area was hit with a major ice-storm.

Fallen trees and branches took down power lines, rendering 2,000,000 residents and companies without power for days and even weeks.

Not having power for multiple days wreaks havoc for any business, but for Appli-Tec, it would have been a catastrophe. We manufacture and store precision mixed and frozen (PMF) adhesives in ultra-low temperature freezers for aerospace, defense, and medical device customers.

The power outage, however, wasn’t a problem for Appli-Tec’s 12 freezers. Our proven liquid nitrogen backup system was put to the test for approximately 40 hours – and it worked like a champ!

This backup system, which maintains temperatures at specified set points for each freezer, responded automatically to the power interruption. The system is fully self-contained and doesn’t rely on generators.

Not only did we safeguard our inventory and meet all shipment deadlines in the weeks that followed, but we also replenished the ruined inventory of numerous customers who were not similarly prepared when they lost power.

Two weeks without power? No problem.

While we’re very happy with our backup power system, we’ve continued to make updates to ensure our system is failsafe – while improving efficiencies and reducing our carbon footprint. In July 2020, for example, we added our 12,000 liter liquid nitrogen tank to eliminate manual tank changes.

Over the last two years, we replaced our entire freezer fleet. While the old freezers served us well, they also consumed a great deal of energy.

Our new PHCbi ultra low temperature freezers (pictured above) require far less energy. They also include dual-redundant compressors: if a compressor fails, the second compressor can maintain cryogenic temperatures – and the adhesive materials in the freezer stay frozen.

The new freezers are also larger, which allows us greater storage capacity.

In case of catastrophic power loss, our LN system kicks in – the way it did during the 2008 ice-storm.

New efficiencies = better PMF adhesives

In addition to improving our physical plant and work centers, we also invested considerable time and energy improving our people and how we work.

Our teams have participated in cross-training. We continually talk through our processes to remove obstacles and improve communication flow. We’ve introduced several new products and have maintained our on-time delivery metric.

We invest in this work because our tagline, “On time, every time, defect-free,” isn’t something to which we aspire. All of us live it, work it, and breathe it, every single day.

The CEO of Appli-Tec, Tim has over 30 years of experience in the pre-mixed and frozen (PMF) adhesives industry.

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