Mr. Meinl, how long have you been Managing Director at Buday?
Since August 2014.

How has the company developed since then?
In 2014, Buday was about 80% a trading company and around 20% a converter of adhesive tapes and labels with low manufacturing depth. At that time, we mainly sold standard products from 3M and Scapa. We outsourced many services and refined only a few products ourselves.

Today, we are an independent material manufacturer with integrated converting. We can provide our customers with solutions that are completely independent of the “standard products” from major brand manufacturers—solutions tailored to their challenges, not the other way around. To achieve this, we have significantly expanded our manufacturing depth and built our own testing laboratory. As a result, we now produce or refine more than 80% of the products we sell ourselves. You could say we’ve completely restructured our company to best meet the needs of our customers.

What makes Buday a unique player in the field of industrial adhesive solutions?
One of Buday’s biggest strengths is our complete independence from standard products. We don’t need to base our offerings on the portfolio of a major brand. Instead, we can freely combine components like adhesives, films, fabrics, etc., and create new products tailored to our customers’ needs. Where it makes sense, we can of course supplement with standard products. This gives us tremendous flexibility to meet our customers’ requirements precisely and offer them attractive conditions at the same time.

In what areas can Buday support its customers?
We pursue two strategic approaches when it comes to our customers:

1. Cost-effective high-performance private label products, such as our NONSLIP and ACR lines. With these, we aim to help our customers save a lot of money while receiving excellent products under the BUDAY brand.

2. Solution-oriented project business, particularly in industries such as automotive, electronics, rail, and manufacturing. In these sectors, customers approach us with specific requirements—often related to material properties or how the products need to be processed, both on the customer’s side and ours. Here, we can offer an incredible variety of solutions that help our customers meet technical requirements while optimizing their own processing workflows.

What can customers expect when they approach Buday?
The first step is always a discussion of the technical requirements, which we document—regardless of whether it’s a seemingly standard request or a complex project. Often, we uncover surprising insights that result in a product much better suited to the customer’s needs and processes than they had originally envisioned. We then implement and test the solution in our production—this applies to small batches as well as large-scale series.

What successes has Buday celebrated in recent years?
One of the highlights was securing a particularly exciting project in the field of e-automotive. The task was to electrically insulate conductive parts in vehicle batteries, ensure thermal conductivity, and meet the highest adhesive strength requirements. It’s an application where we were able to bring our full range of expertise into play—from development to customer-side automation.

How do you view current market trends, and how will Buday respond?
The market is characterized by uncertainty—wars, tariffs, technological disruption, particularly in areas like e-automotive. Capital-intensive industries sometimes face a dilemma where they must place risky bets on the future. We see this with our customers as well.

But for Buday, this presents a major opportunity. Thanks to our agility and solution-driven approach, we can quickly respond to technology shifts and new customer demands. Our global supplier network gives us ideal conditions to offer competitive pricing. These strengths make us an ideal partner in the eyes of many of our customers.

So we view the current market environment as a great opportunity for sustainable, long-term growth.

What advantage does your location in Southern Germany offer?
We are located in the heart of one of Europe’s industrial hotspots and are excellently connected to our customers—both nationally and internationally. The location offers enormous advantages.

What are your goals for the company over the next few years?
We want to further increase Buday’s visibility in our target industries and expand internationally. Our goal is for customers to see Buday as the first address when it comes to technical adhesive applications. To achieve that, we will continue to expand both our technical capabilities and our global network.

Mr. Meinl, thank you for the interview.