Category: MENA

Sustainable hot melt adhesives resolve manufacturers from traditional hurdles in bonding

Bedford, Mass., March 15, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — A new era for adhesives has arrived for manufacturers seeking debondable structural adhesive solutions to avoid waste and save costs in manufacturing. Today, Conagen, the biotechnology innovator, announced the development of highly sought-after debondable hot melt adhesives made by high-performance materials from sustainable and natural bio-molecules.

“Conagen has solved the challenges manufacturers face in seeking strong structural adhesives that are long-lasting, perform strongly, and have the valuable option for breaking the adhesion before final finishing operations to deliver perfect products,” said J. McNamara, vice-president of chemical applications.

The advantages of high-strength debondable adhesives benefit multiple industries. For example, smartphones and electronics can be repaired effortlessly, and deconstructed at the end of their life without damaging components for recovery and recycling of valuable parts currently in land refills.

“Conagen’s patented debondable hot melt adhesive are incredibly stronger than what is used in the market now and can outperform petroleum-based products with a sustainable advantage that saves time, cost and reduces waste,” said McNamara.

McNamara further states, “The unexpected boost in performance comes from Conagen’s fermented ingredients already at full industrial scale.” And, “Conagen is open to discussing commercialization opportunities with manufacturers who are interested in a new era of performance materials.”

Adhesives offer many advantages in joining materials, including the ease of use compared to welding, sealing, distributing stress, and environmental resistance. Currently, manufacturers glue two pieces together and wait for a day to cure the bond. If there are imperfections in the bond, the glued products are thrown away because they cannot be unglued, resulting in time and material waste.

Today, most reactive hot melt adhesives rely on post-curing chemistry to develop adhesive strength. A downside to this approach is the curing process is irreversible and, as such, hinders or prevents de-bonding almost entirely.

While the ingredients of Conagen’s hot melt adhesives are commonly found in nature, to develop sustainable debondable adhesives, Conagen leverages its precision fermentation technology to engineer a synthetic pathway independent of plant source materials, creating more efficient and sustainable bio-based ingredients than what can be achieved with chemically-synthesized versions.

Conagen’s inspiration is self-healing materials, using sustainable and natural ingredients, turning them into high-strength debondable hot melt adhesives. “The process is as simple as cutting the plastic that reheals itself in less time than the conventional way,” said McNamara.

The Conagen adhesive is unique as it is a cross-linked material designed with reversibility in mind that exhibits the strength of traditionally cured adhesives with the added benefit of transitioning to a flowable material after heating.

Conagen’s debondable adhesive formulation is ideal for cars, boats, planes, transportation, consumer electronics and appliances, and military and industrial applications. And Adhesives in electric vehicles (EVs) are more widespread than conventional automobiles.

The adhesives market stood at $729.11 billion in 2019 and is projected to exhibit a CAGR of 5.3% between 2020 and 2027, making Conagen’s adhesive formulation lucrative in the original equipment manufacturers (OEM) market.

Conagen’s hallmark in the specialty and industrial space is discovering applications from the platform of natural bio-compounds and bio-materials for a new era of materials that are both high-performing and sustainable.

“Our adhesive formulation continues to show promise for bonding a wide array of materials, such as metal, plastic, and glass,” said McNamara. “We’re making it easier for companies to adopt a more natural position in manufacturing while staying true to the performance of their products.”

About Conagen

Conagen is a product-focused, synthetic biology R&D company with large-scale manufacturing service capabilities. Our scientists and engineers use the latest synthetic biology tools to develop high-quality, sustainable, nature-based products by precision fermentation and enzymatic bioconversion. We focus on the bioproduction of high-value ingredients for food, nutrition, flavors and fragrances, pharmaceutical, and renewable materials industries. www.conagen.com

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• Robotic hot melt adhesive
• Conagen develops sustainable debondable hot melt adhesive from natural ingredients.

Ana Arakelian
Conagen
+1.781.271.1588
ana.arakelian@conagen.com

Grid-eMotion™ Fleet smart charging solution to help the City of Berlin reach its goal of a zero-emission bus fleet by 2030

Zurich, Switzerland, March 15, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Hitachi Energy has won an order from Berliner Verkehrsbe-triebe (BVG), Germany’s biggest municipal public transportation company, to supply its Grid-eMotion™ Fleet smart charging infrastructure to help BVG transition to sustainable mobility in Berlin, the country’s capital.

Hitachi Energy will provide a complete Grid-eMotion Fleet grid-to-plug charging infrastructure solution for the next two bus depots to be converted in the bus electrification program. Hitachi Energy’s solution offers the smallest footprint for both the connection, as well as low noise emissions and high reliability – three key requirements for bus depots in a densely populated urban environment, where space is limited and flawless charging is vital to ensure buses run on time.

The solution comprises a connection to the distribution grid, power distribution and DC charging infrastructure with charging points and smart charging systems. Hitachi Energy will perform the engineering and integrate, install and service the entire solution. The solution has a compact and robust design that requires less equipment than competing infrastructure, which results in a small footprint, lower operating and maintenance costs, and higher reliability. Typically, Grid-eMotion Fleet requires 60 percent less space and 40 percent less cabling than alternative charging systems; it also provides superior overall system reliability.

“We are delighted to help the City of Berlin in its transition to quiet and emission-free transportation and a sustainable energy future for the people of this iconic capital,” said Niklas Persson, Managing Director of Hitachi Energy’s Grid Integration business. “We feel the urgency and have the pioneering technology and commitment to advance sustainable mobility, thus improving the quality of life of millions of people.”

BVG operates Germany’s biggest city bus fleet of around 1,500 vehicles, which it aims to make completely electric and emission-free by 2030. This requires the installation of charging infra-structure in its large network of bus depots.

About Grid-eMotion

Grid-eMotion comprises two unique, innovative solutions – Fleet and Flash. Grid-eMotion Fleet is a grid-code compliant and space-saving grid-to-plug charging solution that can be in-stalled in new and existing bus depots. The charging solution can be scaled flexibly as the fleet gets bigger and greener. It includes a robust and compact grid connection and charging points, and is also available for commercial vehicle fleets, including last-mile delivery and heavy-duty trucks that require high power charging of several megawatts. Grid-eMotion Flash™ enables operators to flash-charge buses within seconds at passenger stops and fully recharge within minutes at the route terminus, without interrupting the bus schedule.

Both solutions are equipped with configurable smart charging digital platforms that can be em-bedded with larger fleet and energy management systems. Additional offerings from Hitachi Energy for EV charging systems consist of e-mesh™ energy management and optimization solutions and Lumada APM, EAM and FSM solutions, to help transportation operators make informed decisions that maximize their uptime and improve efficiency.

In the past few months alone, Hitachi Energy has won orders from customers and partners all over the world for its smart charging portfolio – a sign that Grid-eMotion is changing the e-mobility landscape for electric buses and commercial vehicles. Grid-eMotion solutions are al-ready operating or under development in Australia, Canada, China, India, the Middle East, the United States and several countries in Europe.

About Hitachi Energy Ltd.

Hitachi Energy is a global technology leader that is advancing a sustainable energy future for all. We serve customers in the utility, industry and infrastructure sectors with innovative solutions and services across the value chain. Together with customers and partners, we pioneer technologies and enable the digital transformation required to accelerate the energy transition towards a carbon-neutral future. We are advancing the world’s energy system to become more sustainable, flexible and secure whilst balancing social, environmental and economic value. Hitachi Energy has a proven track record and unparalleled installed base in more than 140 countries. Headquartered in Switzerland, we employ around 38,000 people in 90 countries and generate business volumes of approximately $10 billion USD.

About Hitachi, Ltd.

Hitachi, Ltd. (TSE: 6501), headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, contributes to a sustainable society with a higher quality of life by driving innovation through data and technology as the Social Innovation Business. Hitachi is focused on strengthening its contribution to the Environment, the Resilience of business and social infrastructure as well as comprehensive programs to enhance Security & Safety. Hitachi resolves the issues faced by customers and society across six domains: IT, Energy, Mobility, Industry, Smart Life and Automotive Systems through its proprietary Lumada solutions. The company’s consolidated revenues for fiscal year 2020 (ended March 31, 2021) totaled 8,729.1 billion yen ($78.6 billion), with 871 consolidated subsidiaries and approximately 350,000 employees worldwide. For more information on Hitachi, please visit the company’s website at https://www.hitachi.com.

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• The City of Belin taken at night

Rebecca Bleasdale
Hitachi Energy Ltd.
+41 78643 2613
rebecca.bleasdale@hitachienergy.com

TORONTO, March 10, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Sophi.io, The Globe and Mail’s AI-powered automation and optimization platform, was announced this week as a finalist in the International News Media Association (INMA)’s 2022 Global Media Awards in the category of Best Innovation in Newsroom Transformation. Partnering with Naviga, it automated print laydown for Agderposten, a regional daily newspaper that serves over 25,000 readers across Norway, and increased print efficiencies by 66%.

“Sophi’s automated machine-learning system is the biggest transformation to print media in decades,” said Gordon Edall, Co-Founder at Sophi.io. “We’re grateful that Agderposten chose to work with Naviga and us. Their commitment to improving efficiency and embracing ground-breaking technology like Naviga Publisher powered by Sophi.io should inspire the entire media industry to look forward to a future where AI and automation helps everyone.”

Naviga Publisher powered by Sophi.io is an artificial intelligence-powered system that emulates human decisions to produce newspaper pages that look like they were created with an understanding of the news of the day as well as high journalistic standards. All editors need to do is roughly prioritize articles and hit the “Print My Newspaper” button to generate an automated print laydown, without templates, in minutes. Handing over this labour-intensive task lets newsrooms focus on their real objective of finding and telling the next important story.

“It’s hours saved for journalism,” said Agderposten’s Editor-in-Chief Katrine Lia. And the staff at Agderposten often cannot tell the difference between pages produced by Sophi and those handled by their editors.

Sophi and Naviga, a large software technology provider for the global publishing industry, have been working with Agderposten for more than a year now and successes there have paved the way to bringing dozens of new titles from several major publishing houses on board this year. Sophi provides cutting edge AI and ML technology that, along with Naviga Publisher, fully automates the end-to-end print production workflow.

Agderposten was the first customer to use Publisher. Its print production process is now centralized, its newspaper laydown is up to 80% automated, and most impressively, Agderposten has realized a 66% reduction in time and resources – lowering the cost of producing the printed newspaper and letting journalists work on creating digital content rather than operating InDesign.

Agderposten CEO Øyvind Klausen said he expected cost savings and efficiency would continue to increase as more of Agderposten’s pages were automated and more of its newspapers implemented the print automation solution.

The Global Media Awards received 854 entries from 252 news brands in 46 countries this year. The judges consist of 50 media experts from 24 countries focused across 20 categories, including news brands, media platforms, subscriptions, advertising, data and insights, product, and newsrooms. The first place winners will be announced on June 9.

About Naviga
Naviga (https://www.navigaglobal.com) is the leading provider of software and services powering media-rich industries. Their Content Engagement Platform helps companies create, enrich, deliver and monetize content to manage engagements from end-to-end. Their solutions are easy to use, scalable and agile. Combining their experience in media with a dedication to digital, they’ve developed software solutions that help any content-driven business meet the demands of the future of information. With headquarters in Bloomington, MN and regional offices throughout the world, Naviga is a trusted partner serving over 1,400 news media, entertainment media, broadcast, magazine, financial services and corporate clients in 45 countries.

About Sophi.io 
Sophi.io (https://www.sophi.io) was developed by The Globe and Mail to help content publishers make important strategic and tactical decisions. It is a suite of AI and ML-powered automation, optimization and prediction solutions that include Sophi Site Automation, Sophi for Paywalls and Sophi for First Party Data. Sophi also powers Naviga Publisher for one-click automated laydown of print and ePaper publishing. Sophi is designed to improve the metrics that matter most to your business, such as subscriber retention and acquisition, engagement, recency, frequency and volume.

Media Contact  
Jamie Rubenovitch 
Head of Marketing, Sophi 
The Globe and Mail         
416-585-3355  
jrubenovitch@globeandmail.com