Perfecting Innovative Adhesive Solutions for a Wide Range of Industry Applications

Dymax's solutions are rarely the center of attention for their users – and yet hardly any aircraft could be maintained, hardly any syringe manufactured, and hardly any automotive sensor assembled without them. For many decades, Dymax has consistently perfected innovative adhesive solutions for a wide range of industry applications. In this interview with Wirtschaftsforum, Global Business Development Senior Manager Virginia Hogan and Managing Director Dymax Europe Bernhard Sürth  spoke about the key technological and entrepreneurial foundations of the company's success.

Interview with:

Bernhard Sürth, Managing Director, Dymax Europe	Virginia Hogan,  Business Development Senior Manager

Wirtschaftsforum: Ms. Hogan, Dymax is regarded in the market as an expert in innovative light-curable materials – and much more besides.

Virginia Hogan: We actually don’t see ourselves primarily as a manufacturer of adhesive systems, but rather as an experienced provider of complete solutions. That means we not only develop specific products to address our customers’ individual challenges, but also take an equally in-depth look at their actual processes and complex requirements.

Wirtschaftsforum: Your solutions are used across a wide variety of industries.

Virginia Hogan: They may be indispensable in these applications, but they often aren’t the primary focus for product developers or end users. Take a medical syringe, for example, where the needle has to be securely bonded to the hub, or a modern automobile, which typically contains more than 100 different sensors, many of which are attached to individual components using sophisticated adhesive solutions.The aerospace industry has similarly demanding requirements. During aircraft maintenance, for example, sensitive areas of the fuselage may need to be covered so they remain unaffected by certain treatment processes. The masking materials used for these applications also come from our production facilities.

Wirtschaftsforum: How does your company manage to serve such an enormous variety of industries so effectively in its day-to-day operations?

Virginia Hogan: In my role in Business Development, I focus on identifying the future requirements of our target industries at an early stage. Because developing new materials can take one to two years due to extensive testing and approval procedures, we have to start developing solutions today for the challenges our customers will face tomorrow. Fortunately, we have excellent connections throughout the industries we serve – aerospace, energy, medical technology, and the rapidly growing data center market – which allows us to identify our customers’ pain points early on. The key question for us is always how we can help our customers make their manufacturing processes even more efficient. At the same time, we set extremely high standards for ourselves. On one occasion, we actually apologized because the curing process for a particular adhesive application would take a full 15 seconds. Our customer just laughed and told us that with an alternative process, they had been expecting it to take several hours.

Wirtschaftsforum: How do you approach the individual markets you serve?

Virginia Hogan: We need to be flexible and work together with all market participants, whether in established target markets such as the automotive and electronics industries or in emerging sectors such as electric mobility 15 years ago. At that time, many more companies were active in the market; since then, however, there has been significant consolidation. It is entirely possible that we will see something similar among air taxi companies and data center operators, both of which we are already working with today.

Wirtschaftsforum: What are Dymax’s current priorities in Europe?

Bernhard Sürth: Fundamentally, Dymax sees itself as a global, family-owned company. At the same time, the entire world is being affected by significant macroeconomic disruptions. One important reason for our proven resilience is the depth and global reach of our supply chains, something we were already able to rely on during the COVID-19 pandemic. At the time, many competitors with less vertically integrated manufacturing experienced supply shortages, while the situation remained quite manageable for us. But our customers benefit from our global footprint in much broader ways. Many of them also operate globally, with development and manufacturing facilities across a wide range of regions. Dymax supports them literally everywhere – from developing a new solution to implementing it and providing ongoing support afterward. We operate as part of a network in which everyone can exchange knowledge and expertise with everyone else. This creates not only an extraordinarily effective transfer of knowledge, but also a truly powerful and productive dynamic.

Wirtschaftsforum: What initiatives have you implemented recently?

Bernhard Sürth: In Germany, we have once again significantly expanded our manufacturing capacity, nearly doubling our production space in the process. By strengthening our presence in Europe, we want to align ourselves even more closely with our customers’ local requirements. This is also particularly important in light of the stringent regulatory requirements that apply especially to medical technology, a market in which we have a particularly strong position in Europe. At the same time, we also see substantial growth potential in other regions of the world. We recently opened a new distribution center in Mexico, for example, which will also allow us to serve the Central American market more effectively.

Wirtschaftsforum: What personally fascinates you about Dymax?

Virginia Hogan: I’ve been with the company for 24 years now, and during that time I’ve had the opportunity to witness tremendous growth. Why have I never left? Probably because I’ve had the opportunity to take on five or six different roles and continuously develop professionally. I’m particularly proud that the owners placed their trust in me to build an entirely new segment within our aerospace division. It has since developed into a successful business area that continues to make an important contribution to our growth today.

Bernhard Sürth: What motivates me most is the opportunity to help develop and advance a successful, family-owned company. To me, Dymax is a company whose success is built on technical expertise, strong products, and the way those products are applied in our customers’ operations. My personal motivation is to create the right structures to support this growth sustainably. That encompasses everything from processes and the supply chain to building a professional organization. What I find particularly exciting is driving organizational change and seeing how those changes lead to lasting improvements in the company’s performance, our processes, and the relevant key performance indicators.

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