The data picked polyolefin in 1992. AFFINITY GA, made for hot melts, came twelve years later.
Since the 1960s, packaging hot melts had been built on EVA. In the early 1990s, single-site catalysts from polymer makers, Dow among them, gave adhesive makers a second option: a polyolefin base. For each one we measured how much better per dollar it got each year, using only the patents that existed at the time.
% better per dollar each year. Readings every two years. The polyolefin line starts at its first reading, 1992: the first polyolefin hot melt patent was filed in 1989.
In 1992 polyolefin hot melts were getting about 32% better per dollar every year, EVA about 15%. Polyolefin stayed ahead at every reading since.
The new base kept its bond when boxes got hot or cold, holding at 90 to 93°C where EVA let go at 70 to 75°C. With no oxygen in its backbone it stayed cleaner in the melt tank and could run at lower temperatures, the case Dow made when it launched AFFINITY GA.
Our data: polyolefin improving twice as fast as EVA.
Dow and H.B. Fuller file together for a polyolefin hot melt for case and carton sealing.
The first polyolefin case-sealing hot melt goes on sale, H.B. Fuller's Advantra.
Dow launches AFFINITY GA, “the first products of their kind specifically developed for hot melt adhesive formulations”.
First AFFINITY GA production in Europe, at Tarragona.
A new Freeport plant starts up for AFFINITY polymers used in packaging hot melts.
ELVAX EVA joins Dow from DuPont. Dow now sells both bases.
It would not have said which adhesive maker would win, or that EVA would keep the low-cost end of the market. It would have said the next premium case-sealing hot melt would be built on a polyolefin, twelve years before AFFINITY GA went on sale.
For a polymer maker, that meant grades made for hot melts, and the plants to make them, could be planned years ahead. Dow did both, with AFFINITY GA in 2004 and new hot melt capacity in 2014 and 2018.
Polyolefin still leads, but by 1.4 points, down from 17 in 2000. The same reading works for the race between your own two product lines.
TIR — the Technology Improvement Rate — measures how fast a technology gets better each year, computed from global patent data. Not who is filing, or how much: how fast the route is actually moving. Historically, the fastest-improving technology always wins.
Provenance. Every patent carries a filing date, so the record can be replayed: every improvement rate on this page uses only the patents that were public at the time. Chart data: GetFocus platform exports, October 2026.
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