tesa adhesive tape expanding its footprint in Asia

Dirk Hartmann, general manager of the tesa site in Haiphong

What do you think about the potential of Vietnam in terms of adhesive tape products, and why did you choose the country for the plant's location?

Vietnam and Haiphong are centralised locations in Asia-Pacific. If you see the geographical map from India to Japan or from South Korea to Australia, then Vietnam and Haiphong are exactly in the middle.

There is favourable infrastructure here, which is growing with the addition of new seaports, airports, and motorway connections. This helps to streamline our supply chains and directly translates into prompt and adaptable deliveries; in other words, we are improving our time to market and gaining quick access to local raw materials suppliers.

This is an important factor as the Asian adhesive tape market is experiencing very dynamic development that we want to take advantage of. With the new site in the port city of Haiphong, tesa is creating additional production capacity for Asia, one of the fastest-growing markets.

Our new Haiphong plant complements our production capacities in the region with an existing plant in Suzhou, China that was opened in 2005.

Can you explain tesa’s portfolio of adhesive tapes for industrial production and manufacturing? How will these products be delivered to Vietnam’s market and exported?

This is the sixth main plant we are establishing here, with a size of 70,000 square metres and an annual production of around 40 million sq.m of adhesive tape. We have already achieved the feat of manufacturing 14 million sq.m of tape per year.

tesa itself has a huge variety of products. In total, we offer more than 7,000 products worldwide, manufacturing more or less 60 products in eight assorted groups here in Vietnam. These include high-performance tapes for various industries, such as automotive (wire harnessing tapes in particular), electronics, and solutions for more general industries.

More specifically, these include both single-sided and double-sided tapes, and about half of our products use water-based adhesives. In addition to that, with technology partners as our customers, we are focused on collaborations to plan and market tailored product solutions.

What are the advantages of tesa’s products when compared to other brands?

The main benefit is that we are going for really high-end quality. You can imagine that with a typical thickness of 1 micron, we are operating our machines with great precision to make the coating layers very smooth and even.

Additionally, most of our products from this plant go into electronics, including mobile devices. The other parts are mainly catering to the automotive industry.

Especially with electronics, tapes are a reason why the mobile devices can be manufactured so small. For the electronic components to be made light, watertight, dust tight, and also resistant to any shocks, many essential parts need to be taped. The tapes need to be very precise and of the highest quality.

The grand opening ceremony for the tesa site in Haiphong on October 12

What is tesa doing in terms of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) initiatives and net-zero?

At tesa, sustainability has been one of the most important strategic goals for years. We have set ourselves ambitions targets, for example to achieve climate-neutral production in both Scope 1 and 2 emissions (vs. base year 2018) by 2030.

Indirect emissions along the value chain should be reduced by 20 per cent compared to base year 2018. Furthermore, 70 per cent of the materials for our products and packaging will be recycled or bio-based. We want to cut the use of virgin plastics by half and provide more products with end of life solutions.

This is where our manufacturing standards play a vital role. We have high standards across all our tesa manufacturing sites, and of course, this is no different in our facility in Vietnam.

We are setting up our own solar farm. The panels have not been put on the roof yet, but we have calculated that the farm will produce 1.2MW at peak capacity, accounting for 10 per cent of our consumption.

We also have emissions treatment equipment for airborne volatile organic compounds with a recovery of up to 95 per cent in place, as well as a rainwater treatment system.

Tesa opens new site in Haiphong Tesa, the German manufacturer of adhesive tapes and solutions, opened its new site in Haiphong on October 12 as part of its strategy to regionalise production, expand capacity, and optimise supply chains.

German tape manufacturer to build plant in Vietnam Hamburg-based tesa last month announced that it will invest €55 ($60.4 million) in a tape adhesive plant in Vietnam, making it the 15th production site that tesa will operate worldwide, alongside large plants in Germany, Italy, the US, and China.

Groundbreaking for Thang Long Project-Tesa Site Haiphong sets milestone On January 26, the groundbreaking ceremony of the Thang Long Project-Tesa Site Haiphong took place at DEEP C Industrial Zones Haiphong, marking an important step for the establishment of Tesa's new production facility in Vietnam.