The business now employs 10 people from a 20,000ft2 site.
Crozier’s career started as an RAF aircraft engineer. Demobbed, he took a job as a sales engineer for a large adhesives brand, and then was headhunted to join a rival. A few years later, he realised a lifelong ambition to start working for himself, setting up Advanced Adhesives on 1 October 1998.
The business initially started by distributing Italian adhesives brand Loxeal, which he had first came across while working in Turkey. Not only was it high quality – which Crozier describes as a key factor – it was also unrepresented in the UK.
But he was keen to extend beyond mere distribution, he states. “By offering only product A or product B, customers’ applications had to suit the adhesive. Our belief is that the adhesive should suit the application.” So, it wasn’t long before the business moved into manufacturing. Its first production line was for an epoxy; then it started blending cyanoacrylates to gain varying viscosities to suit applications for speed and gap filling, and then continued to develop adhesives as and when the opportunity or need arose.
For example, a notable standard product still produced today, PP3000, is a two-part methacrylate-based adhesive that bonds polypropylene and polyethylene and other low surface energy materials, structurally. It came out of a request from Bentley, who were looking to replace a multi-material, heavy dashboard. They planned to use polypropylene to save weight, the trouble was that many people had tried, and failed, to find a way to bond structurally the low surface energy plastic like polypropylene.
When asked how he succeeded when others haven’t, Crozier credited perseverance – and a creative partnership with a consultant chemist. He recalls: “A chemist knows what cross links with what, and what doesn’t. But as an engineer, my attitude is, ‘Let’s try it and see.’ So, we discovered some things that maybe shouldn’t have worked but that did.”
Now with 10 production lines – each reserved for a different product, as the company does not like them to share multiple products because of the risk of cross-contamination – its latest automated filling machine, bought during COVID, can fill, piston and label 5,000 cartridges a day, six times faster than a team of two workers can manage.
“I’m looking forward to the next 25 years working to develop products with customers existing and new.”
BOX: Rubber ducky One of the more unusual jobs Advanced Adhesives has taken on is a rubber duck, a giveaway for bath foam brand Radox. The brand had commissioned 1m; 200,000 of which were already in the UK. The duck included a flashing light powered by a battery, an insert in the base. The trouble was, the cells were dropping out of the bottom. Made of polypropylene and polyethylene, the ducks’ low surface energy materials required special treatment for bonding, which the factory did not consider. Advanced Adhesives recommended the use of a primer and moisture-resistant cyanoacrylate to do the job. As the product was made in China, Advanced Adhesives wrote a report explaining its results and offering in-country sourcing advice as well. Job done.
