Henkel’s production facility for aerospace materials

March 01, 2018 - Germany

Amidst growing demand for high-impact solutions in the aerospace industry, Henkel is making a new production facility for aerospace materials at its site in Montornès del Vallès, Spain. The facility will include new buildings and equipment for additional production and warehouse capacities to support key trends such as light weighting and automation.

Due to the proximity to several sites of global key customer Airbus, Montornès will become Henkel’s European hub for the aerospace industry. At JEC World 2018, Henkel’s specialists will be available to discuss the benefits of the company’s broad product portfolio and global service capacities for composite applications in aerospace.

One of Henkel’s major spotlights at the show will be on newly developed Loctite potting compounds for honeycomb sandwich assemblies used in the aerospace industry. Particularly in terms of micro-cracking resistance, density/strength ratio and flame retardancy, these advanced materials feature major improvements over conventional potting compounds. Typical applications include primary and secondary structures, such as fuselage and wing components, as well as interior panels. The new “Aerospace Potting Compounds” will be featured in a special presentation on March 8.

“The aerospace industry has a growing demand for consolidated structural designs capable of providing significant reductions in weight, fuel consumption and carbon dioxide emission as well as manufacturing time and system cost,” says Ron Habermas, global OEM market development manager for Henkel. “Our comprehensive product offering is addressing these challenges, while we also provide extensive engineering expertise to support the rapid development, testing and optimisation of composite applications. In addition, the new Montornès plant will significantly improve our supply capacities for European customers.”

Other interesting products on display will include a broad range of fast-curing Loctite liquid shim materials, lightweight high-quality Loctite surfacing films (including Lightning Strike) as well as various priming and surface treating solutions.

Boeing and Airbus forecast a worldwide demand for up to 40,000 new aircrafts over the next two decades. With a 10-year production backlog and new aircrafts increasingly counting on lightweight composites, both Henkel’s expertise in process automation and its high-impact solutions for the aerospace industry are in high demand. (SV)