ASC: Offering more and expecting more

The Adhesive and Sealant Council is poised to add more value amid shifting markets and an uncertain future for the sector and its members

Amid shifting markets, increasing regulation and an uncertain future, the Adhesive and Sealant Council (ASC) is poised to provide more value for its members with broader education, market analysis and an informed outlook for new technology and potential applications.

So says Andy Johnston, newly elected ASC chairman, in outlining top priorities for the council going forward. “Our ultimate goal for ASC is simple: adding more value for our members,” he says.

Technical education is a key focus for delivery by the ASC Copyright: Rex Features

Key components supporting that goal, he adds, include offering greater educational opportunities for members, encouraging and measuring the level of members’ engagement with the council, working to shape regulatory issues and bringing in technical research 
experts to help chart the course ahead for market and application trends.

“Education is the major theme in all that we do here,” Johnston says.

ASC president Matt Croson agrees, noting that the council is now in the process of recruiting a technical manager for education, who will make up the third member of a team “dedicated to our educational offerings – our number one strategic goal”.

The council is building a programme of eight short courses, including three new subject-matter areas, that will complement the 12 certification courses that are already being implemented. Those courses, along with the ASC Convention and its existing 12 annual webinars, says Croson, stand as “a vibrant, dynamic programme for our members”.

In assembling the ASC educational team, Croson says, “it is important to emphasise the word ‘technical’, because we are looking for people and building an educational team that has the necessary technical background in our industry to ensure that our courses are properly focused”.

These are not generic courses, he notes, “but chemically oriented on a range from ‘Sealants 101’ to advanced materials, materials testing, advanced polymers, and so on. So it is important that we have a highly technical focus in our education programme – and in the people who are running it.”

But offering added value is not enough; its impact has to be measured. “Another of our priorities now,” says Johnston, “is measuring the engagement of our members, so we can be sure that they are taking advantage of what is offered.” To do that, ASC is developing an “engagement index”, explains Johnston, “a quantitative tool to score exactly how engaged our members are”.

ENGAGEMENT INDEX ROLL-OUT
That engagement index will be completed and presented to the ASC board of directors in the second quarter this year, he says, “and assuming all goes well, we’ll be rolling it out to our members”. The engagement index will track 16 areas of interface between the council and its member firms and their employees.

It will award points to member companies and their employees in such areas as attending the convention, taking an ASC course or using the council’s market reports.

In addition, the index will measure points for members who serve on the board of directors, their involvement in government-relation efforts and various task forces.

“It’s not just about purchasing things,” Croson says, “but also volunteerism among our members.”

The engagement index, he says, “will allow us to have conversations with our members on how they are leveraging the council and give them opportunities and guidance on how to take advantage of those areas of the council that they haven’t yet engaged.”

The ASC Convention takes place in Nashville this spring Copyright: Rex Features

Johnston likens the index to a company’s use of customer satisfaction surveys. “So we’re trying to translate that approach into improving the council’s engagement with its members,” he says.

Another key priority this year is “community knowledge integration”. “Again”, says Croson, “this is more engagement. We’re going to be publishing more market reports so that members can have a handle on market trends, reports that are informed by customer input.”

Through next year and into 2017, ASC plans to publish eight market reports covering core applications markets, but also key regions. “We also will be expanding our face-to-face portfolio,” Croson says, citing in particular the leadership conference planned for June this year that will include sit-down engagement with a variety of technical and industrial trend authorities to try to get a grip on what the future might hold for adhesives and sealants.

“This is our ‘10 Years Out’ programme,” Croson notes. “We want to reach out to the broader research and development communities to explore where things might be in the next 10 years and how we in ASC and our members will have to change to be part of that dynamic and, as a result, help drive our businesses forward.”

Looking into the crystal ball of market trends, says Johnston, there are already clear signposts on what is impacting the adhesives and sealants markets. Chief among them, he says, “is the light-weighting of cars and trucks to improve fuel efficiency and to make transportation more ‘green’.”

“A lot of our companies are focusing on that market, and it looks very positive for the adhesives sector,” Johnston says. “As vehicle manufacturers work to drive down weight, they have to move to alternative means of construction. The new Ford F-150 is all aluminium, and the Corvette has carbon fibre optional components, and as automakers move to those new materials they have to find ways of joining them – because they can’t do welding.”

ADHESIVES FOR PACKAGING
Another looming and booming market segment is adhesives for food packaging, he says. In his day job, Johnston is vice president for industrial specialties at Ashland, where he envisions food packaging as “definitely an area that will see demand for more adhesives, including making adhesives safe for food packaging and that have very low migration”.

Johnston also anticipates renewed growth in the residential construction market for adhesives and sealants, even if there is not necessarily a lot of innovation there.

“But there is a lot of growth there,” he says, noting that new home construction might not recover to the pre-recession high mark of 2.1m housing starts annually, but there will be “significant growth ahead”.

Johnston also sees significant growth ahead for ASC as well. “As I look out to 2017, I would say that ASC will be bigger, with more members building on the value that we offer. I think the council will be clearly stronger, both financially and organisationally, but to get there we will have to be a more engaged community. That is what will drive our growth.”

Croson also forecasts strong growth for the council. “We have been around since 1958, and our board is now taking a long-term approach,” he says. Referring to the council’s plans and implementation strategies, Croson notes: “We will make some mistakes, but we will continue and find out what works and make adjustments as needed.”

The focus, he says, is on a growth strategy for both the council and the industry. “We’re interviewing other trade associations that have successfully launched growth plans, and we’re looking to a marketing plan to promote awareness.”

OPPORTUNITIES FOR GROWTH
At the coming June board meeting, he adds, “we’ll present what other associations are doing and what markets we should go after and what collaborative efforts can be made. Right now we’re looking at top areas of opportunity for our members, such as light-weighting, building construction, electronics and others and build our campaign around reaching out to more design engineers, to let them know what our industry offers, so that they begin to think in terms of adhesives and sealants in their work.”

“Everything we do is supportive of being the materials of choice for innovators. In every industry, people are innovating all the time, and we want the design engineers in those industries to think of adhesives and sealants when they’re innovating.”

The adhesives and sealants sector will need all the growth it can get, to build extra muscle and influence as regulatory tides are soon to be sweeping in to the industry. Chief among them is the coming battle royal in the effort to modernise and reform the nearly 40-year-old Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).

New legislation has been introduced in Congress, but there are multiple stakeholders and interest groups that want a piece of the legislation, seeking to bend the bill this way or that to meet their goals and needs. Chemicals producers, chemicals and resins industrial consumers, the agriculture and forestry industries, environmental groups, federal, state and local regulators in health, safety and environment – all will be on Capitol Hill, trying to advance their respective causes.

There is one point of agreement among all stakeholders and interest groups: TSCA badly needs an overhaul.

“There’s no question that the law needs to be updated,” Croson says. “We need to give consumers the confidence that chemicals in industry and commerce are going through a rigorous process of review. Chemicals and chemicals manufacturing have advanced in the last 40 years, including new performance adhesives in particular, and everyone needs to be comfortable and confident that these new products are safe, whether they’re in 
automotives or food packaging.”

“I am more confident now of congressional passage of the TSCA reform,” he says, “But, still, I’d give it only a 60% chance of passing this year, maybe better odds in 2016.”