Paints are used to protect and enhance the appearance of all sorts of objects, ranging from large industrial installations, steel structures and houses down to small everyday items. We make resin products for paints. These products are individually customized for use in many different kinds of paint, including undercoat paints applied directly to materials such as metals, plastics and concrete, second coats applied on these undercoats, and top coats to provide a durable finish. To make our products environmentally safe by reducing the content of VOCs as atmospheric pollutants, we are developping resins for use in paints with a high solid content and waterborne paints that contain lower levels of organic solvents.

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Alkyd resins, acrylic resins, modified epoxy resins, epoxy resin curing agents, urethane resins, amino resins, UV-curable resins, metal carboxylates, pigment dispersal agents, etc.

Printing inks are used in many everyday items including books, magazines, leaflets and packaging materials. Today, such items are mostly produced using lithographic and gravure printing processes. Of the 500,000 tons of domestic printing ink shipped in 2007, lithographic printing inks accounted for 190,000 tons (38%), and gravure inks accounted for 160,000 tons (32%). Every year, printing inks must satisfy tougher demands with regard to their performance and functioning in order to cope with higher printing speeds while reducing their environmental impact and imparting greater added value to the resulting printed articles. At Harima Chemicals, Inc., we are addressing our customers'demands for greater diversity and increased functionality by developing resins with a range of properties, chiefly for use in lithographic and gravure printing inks.

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Resins for web offset printing inks (sheet-fed printing, offset roll printing, newspapers), resins for gravure printing inks (publication gravure printing, special gravure printing), resins for pigment dispersal

The main constituents of adhesives are high-molecular-weight polymers such as acrylic resins, ethylene-vinyl acetate (EVA) resins, and styrene-butadiene Rubber (SBR). By blending these polymers with specific low-molecular-weight compounds, it is possible to improve properties such as adhesive force and heat resistance. These low-molecular-weight compounds are called tackifiers. At Harima Chemicals, Inc., we produce tackifiers derived from rosin. These tackifiers have excellent miscibility with polymers of all types and substantially improve the performance of adhesives, thus ranking among our most widely applicable and important materials.
In May 2004, Japan's Air Pollution Law was amended to impose restrictions on VOC emissions, and it went into force from April 2006. As a result, it is no longer possible to ignore the organic solvents in adhesives and there is growing demand for solvent-free adhesives, especially emulsion-type adhesives. At Harima Chemicals, Inc., we have also been researching and developing water-based emulsion-type tackifier resins in order to address these environmental concerns, and we have brought out an extensive range of products that are suited to a wide variety of different needs. Recently, we also brought out an extensive line-up of completely solvent-free tackifier resin emulsions made by emulsifying rosin derivatives without the use of any solvent in the production process.