FEATURE

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How AI and Biobased Chemistry Are Helping to Transform Adhesives

By Lisa Anderson, Founder and President, LMA Consulting Group

By Karen Parker, Editor-in-Chief, ASI

ASI interviewed Michael Lefenfeld, President & CEO of Hexion to discuss the company's sustainability strategy and vision for the future of sustainable chemistry.

Adhesive and sealant manufacturers, their raw material suppliers, and their end users continue to face challenges that are driven by sustainability demands from consumers and regulators. As companies work to reduce their carbon footprints, they are tackling problems with a broad approach, looking at the entire product life cycle and considering many different aspects of manufacturing and business practices that contribute to sustainability. At the forefront of sustainable innovation is Hexion, a global leader in adhesive and AI technologies for wood panel manufacturing.

Hexion has partnered with Swiss startup Bloom Biorenewables to commercialize a renewable, high-performance alternative to synthetic adhesives. Bloom has developed a cost-effective process that preserves the natural adhesive properties of lignin — a wood-based polymer — by using low-cost aldehydes during extraction to protect its reactive chemical groups. Unlike traditional methods that damage the lignin’s structure, Bloom’s innovation enables recovery of high-quality, uncondensed lignin at commercial scale, marking an industry first. This breakthrough paves the way for 100% plant-based adhesives that deliver strong bonding performance, enhance sustainability, and allow manufacturers to extract up to 80% more value from wood by utilizing previously wasted material. The partnership now focuses on developing a scalable process to produce manufacturing-ready, adhesive-grade lignin to activate its natural functionality without additional chemicals—representing a transformative step toward replacing fossil-based resins with sustainable, wood-derived alternatives.

ASI sat down with Michael Lefenfeld, President & CEO of Hexion to discuss the company's sustainability strategy, key initiatives and vision for the future of sustainable chemistry.

ASI: How does sustainability fit into Hexion’s overall business strategy, particularly within your portfolio for adhesives and sealants?

Michael Lefenfeld: Sustainability is core to everything we do, however, it must be the right type of sustainability. Our ultimate goal is to do what is right for the planet, for customers, for our partners, but from a business perspective, we must also approach it in a way that the industry will adopt (from a cost and production standpoint). Internally, we don’t limit ourselves to incremental sustainability improvements. Instead, we follow a more “revolutionary” research approach, even considering technologies that might disrupt our own business. In our adhesives and sealants business, the Bloom product and our in-house next generation resin programs, have the potential to disrupt our own adhesive product lines, but with the aim of introducing materials that are more renewable, more sustainable, and more performance capable. As you know, we've also been partnering across the industry—with both early-stage organizations and late-stage organizations—to make sustainability a core center to our innovation pipeline and our commercial pipeline.

ASI: What are some of the most impactful steps Hexion has taken recently to reduce its environmental footprint in manufacturing and operations?

Lefenfeld: Last year, Hexion completed its first acquisition in about a decade, a company called Smartech. Smartech allows Hexion to deliver production equipment and AI software that help wood panel manufacturers run their lines with less waste, higher throughput, and lower energy usage. While it was considered an unusual acquisition, Smartech was key to our strategy to transition from a commodity chemical company to become a leader forefront of digital and sustainable manufacturing.

For example, our Smartech AI software allows the engineered wood producer to operate at a much higher efficiency level, beyond what today’s mills are capable of. Using AI capabilities allows every mill operator to become the ultimate operator and make every board at the highest quality and with the most efficient raw material use. Similarly, our SmartSystem equipment dispenses sealants and adhesives much more efficiently and in a way that reduces waste. In effect, these systems give manufacturers the ability to do more with less, better control the use of our adhesives, and create higher raw material dispersion and consumption. By enabling producers to use less raw materials – even our own – we're lowering the environmental impact across both production and consumables. This is a real sustainability driver, core to our sustainability plan, and that's probably the most impactful thing we've done in the most recent period.

ASI: Can you share an example of a product innovation that reflects your commitment to sustainable chemistry?

Lefenfeld: I’m a firm believer that great innovations are never created in a vacuum – we must work together across the industry to create sustainable change. One example of this is our recently announced partnership with Bloom Biorenewables. We're partnering with Bloom to commercialize new adhesives that are made directly from lignin. Lignin is a part of the tree that's ultimately the “glue” of the tree itself. We're using those plant-based compounds to make stronger, more resilient, and much more sustainable adhesives for the wood panel industry. Partnering with a technology disruptor, like Bloom, enables us to unite Hexion’s legacy of resin chemistry, manufacturing expertise, and application engineering with their start up platform, allowing the two companies to co-develop biobased products that also meet stringent performance and quality specifications at industrial scale.

ASI: How are customer expectations and regulatory shifts shaping your approach to sustainable product development?

Lefenfeld: We consider our customers to be our partners and work closely with them to leverage their expertise. This, in turn, informs our new product innovation and commercialization strategy. Today, we find that those partners are asking much harder and much more detailed questions around sustainability and the full life cycle of our products. They're also setting much higher expectations, because costs and performance are equally important in today’s business and construction market. At Hexion, we welcome that challenge! Hexion has a legacy of more than 150 years in this industry, and it is core to our culture to make sure we are focused on our customers’ needs first and foremost. Their voice is instrumental in our sustainability roadmap for the next 150 years.

ASI: Speaking of collaboration, how does Hexion collaborate across the value chain — from suppliers to end users — to drive more sustainable outcomes?

Lefenfeld: As I've said, our products and solutions are built through collaboration. We work closely with our suppliers, customers, even vendors throughout our supply chain, to make sure we're doing everything in the most renewable and sustainable way.

We build deep and embedded customer partnerships, delivering on-site technical guidance to improve their mill operation. With these strong partnerships, we are able to provide guidance to optimize mill operations at the highest levels possible and to make sure that their performance optimization flows throughout their entire manufacturing process – all supported by Hexion's team of experts.

We've also partnered with companies like Plantd, which uses grass instead of wood to make engineered wood panels, which is a much more carbon sequestering product and has a much faster growing cycle. But it uses similar adhesives and glues to make those products. By working with early-stage firms like Bloom Biorenewables and Plantd, we apply our application expertise and global footprint to shorten time to market.

ASI: As companies are working towards more sustainable products, one of the things that they face is transparency, which it sounds like you've already been working with your customers in that way, what roles do third-party certifications and ESG reporting play as you advance transparency and accountability at the company?

Lefenfeld: Third-party certifications and ESG sustainability reporting are critical in our business. Every year we reporting our performance metrics and carbon reductions metrics as a means to guide our corporate KPS, development programs and continuous improvement efforts. We're continually focusing on how to make our products better, safer, faster, with lower impact on the environment.

We report clear sustainability metrics to customers and communities, so our carbon reductions advance their goals.

ASI: What do you see as the biggest challenge and opportunity for sustainability in the chemical industry over the next decade?

Lefenfeld: Scale is probably the hardest part of that question. Being able to get renewable materials in the way that industrial manufacturers need them, and at the quality and the quantity they require is really the hardest problem being solved today. A lot of companies are working on transforming waste into a raw material source for their products. That's not something that we necessarily do, but we do use wood manufacturing waste to regenerate that product into some of our adhesives. But I would tell you that the de-aggregated nature of those waste streams and bringing them to a single point of use in aggregation is a high cost, and solving that problem is something that our team is focused on. I think it will get solved, but I think there's still probably a little bit more work to do, and that's probably the biggest challenge today for sustainability in those types of industries.

ASI: Looking ahead, what are your top sustainability priorities for Hexion over the next three to five years?

Lefenfeld: As they relate to sustainability, our goals are to lower carbon emissions and increase the renewable raw materials used in our products, with the goal of making the most environmentally friendly products we can. AI is also a core focus for us within our sustainability efforts. We believe that advanced digital tools can help us improve efficiency, increase safety, and deliver the best product we can every single time, every chance we get. That's critical. We will also focus on transparent, on-going collaboration with our partners and the community to advance our breakthrough solutions at scale. If we achieve that together, we drive the best products to our partners and to our customers every time. And that is something that we always want to achieve.