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Quality mobile phone connections with China
Guest article by Gunnar von der Geest
Everybody will be familiar with the small roll of adhesive tape lying on almost every desk. Masking tape and adhesive fabric tapes are also useful everyday aids for repairs. Yet scarcely anybody is aware of just how many ‘Tesa’ brand products are at work in the background. High-tech adhesive tape not only glues two things together, but also performs some astonishing additional functions. The Port of Hamburg acts as a hub for this export hit.
Tesa is truly a brand icon, recognized by 93 percent of those aged between 18 and 69 in Germany. The transparent adhesive film has even won an entry in the standard ‘Duden’ dictionary. The name ‘Tesa’ stands for both an end-consumer brand especially re- nowned in Western Europe and an international tech- nology group – see info box. Yet it also represents a host of adhesive solutions. Without these, much in everyday life would fail to function. You can bet, just at the moment when you are reading this, that some- thing important is hap-
pening in your jacket or trouser pocket? And that you had no idea of the part played there by Tesa?
LAYERED DESIGN IN
SMARTPHONES
Around 40 different high-
tech Tesa adhesive tapes
are in use in the smart-
phones made by virtually
any leading manufactur-
er. And here they need to
do more than simply glue
two things together.
When the devices
packed with electronics
are functioning at full
blast, some elements
will reach temperatures of 70–90°C. To stop any burn-out, special adhesive tapes, some with graphite layers to disperse heat, will achieve a reduction in temperature of over 20°C. The thinnest double-sided adhesive strip currently performing this ‘cooling’ func- tion is five micrometres thick – ten times finer than human hair. Adhesive tapes that block out light are ca- pable of 99.99 percent prevention of any leaks at un-
desirable spots, for example the sides of a display. Another Tesa bestseller is the patented adhesive tape that on the one hand ensures secure fixing of the bat- tery in the case, and on the other can be removed without leaving any residue. As for the display, all mo- bile phone manufacturers share one credo – as large as possible. For the space available for applying adhe- sive, this means – as small as called for. So an adhe- sive strip may often be no more than half a millimetre wide. Yet it also needs to function as a ‘shock absorb-
er’ whenever a smart- phone is dropped. Re- quirements like these often call for ‘squaring the circle’. That’s why more than 500 Tesa col- leagues worldwide work on product & technology development, about 330 of them at its Research Centre in Norderstedt bordering Hamburg.
FROM HAMBURG
TO SHANGHAI
Many leading manufac- turers in the electronics and automotive indus- tries, as well as their sup- pliers, are based in Asia. Fifteen years ago, Tesa
opened a plant in Suzhou, China. This is currently being extended. In addition, in spring this year came the go- ahead to construct a further manufacturing facility for around 55 million euros in Vietnam. Production of ad- hesive tapes for the electronics and automobile indus- tries is due to follow in 2023. Even when the aim is in- creasingly to be as near as possible to customers in industry, so as to supply products rapidly and to keep
EXPORT GATEWAY ■
  LAYERED DESIGN OF A MOBILE PHONE: ADHESIVE TAPES – RED – LINK ELEMENTS AND PERFORM VARIOUS ADDITIONAL FUNC- TIONS. THESE HYPER-THIN ‘MULTI-TALENTS’ ARE AMONG OTHER THINGS CAPABLE OF CONVEYING LIGHT AND CURRENT, AND DISPERSING HEAT.
Port of Hamburg Magazine | September 2020 | 29
© Tesa





































































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