SCANDINAVIA’S LEADING ADHESIVE, SEALANT AND FILLER MANUFACTURER
DANA LIM
We are Scandinavia’s leading adhesive, sealant and filler manufacturer. We develop and manufacture quality solutions with a focus on the customer’s needs. At Dana Lim, we continuously adapt our extensive product range and our services to the market, and the path from thought to action is always short with us.
Our business is built on three pillars: The strong customer and market orientation, a highly specialized product development with the possibilities of use in the center as well as a spacious, environmentally friendly and socially responsible business operation.
We believe that this will create the most sustainable and long-term basis for growth – also in the years to come.
HISTORY
Dana Lim can trace its history back to the spring of 1928. That was when Kai Leopold Hansen got the idea for a revolutionary new and strong type of glue. Since then, Dana Lim has become a well-known name in Denmark, the rest of Scandinavia and Europe as a leading manufacturer of adhesives, jointing compounds and fillers that set new standards for functionality, quality and ease of use.
There was otherwise nothing to indicate that it was Kai Hansen who was to create his life’s work in the world of glue. After his father’s death, he had helped his mother as the day-to-day manager of Hotel Postgaarden in Køge in Denmark. This is how the years went by.
But one spring day in 1928, the event that would forever change life within the hotel’s four dilapidated walls occurred. One of the town’s esteemed citizens was to celebrate his 25th anniversary, and the widow asked her son to restore a couple of the rickety chairs in the hall.
The quality of the glue at the time did not exactly impress Kai Hansen, who had repaired the same chairs time and time again. So instead of lighting a fire under the glue pot, he went over to his neighbor, who worked at the rubber factory. Here, Kai Hansen thought that they had to have a particularly strong glue, and he was right in that. Soon after, he was able to walk back over the cobbled streets with a small box of glue.
The glue was German and smelled strong. Kai Hansen had never seen anything like it, and already the next day he realized that it was a bit of a miracle glue he had got hold of. It was easy and quick to use, and the adhesive strength was impressive.
In the twenties, Denmark was plagued by a post-war crisis that affected both agriculture and industry. Unemployment rose, and ordinary people didn’t have much to worry about. It was rare that anyone bought anything new – instead everything had to be repaired again and again.
Thus, it was not far from thought to action. Kai Hansen began experimenting with film waste and acetone, but the stench of solvents did not combine very well with Postgaarden’s daily operations. So he soon moved to the washhouse, where prescriptions and glued together numbered pieces of wood flowed everywhere.
And then one day, as summer approached, the breakthrough came. As fate would have it, a local journalist came by, so that Kai Hansen was immediately told about his new invention. This is how Dana Lim became world news – at least in Køge!
GLUE FACTORY AT POSTGAARDEN
With the help of good friends, Kai Hansen established a small glue production in the hotel’s back building, and already the following year – in 1929 – Dansk Limfabrik in Nørregade 56 was a reality. Kai Hansen had no doubts about the name of his invention, because everywhere there was a focus on Danish work and Danish products. Dana Lim was born, and soon the famous yellow tube followed, which was to become one of the country’s best-known trademarks.
In record time, Dana Lim was in use all over the country. The motto was not modest, but very apt: “The easiest glue to use. The strongest glue there is.” The world economic crisis that hit Denmark in the mid-1930s meant yet another upswing for Dansk Limfabrik. Danish products became popular as never before, and Kai Hansen constantly added new products to the range.
The Second World War was quite a test for Danish industry, and Dansk Limfabrik was no exception. But it succeeded in keeping production going, despite an often chaotic raw material situation
FROM LAUNDRY TO WORLD MARKET
The production of flammable adhesive products in the middle of the city of Køge had long been an unfortunate combination, and Kai Hansen decided to build a brand new factory north of the city, where Dana Lim is located to this day. The factory was opened in 1948, but Kai Hansen himself did not get to experience the continuation of his life’s work.
On 30 October 1952, he dies suddenly, and the will reveals that his childhood sweetheart Anna Margrethe Hincheli has inherited the entire business. A few years later, she decides to establish Kai Hansens Fond, which is handed over Dansk Limfabrik and is still the sole owner of the business today.
With the fund as owner, Dansk Limfabrik is developing at a leisurely pace. It is only at the end of the 1980s that the expansion really picks up speed. New products, expansion of the development and sales department as well as the construction of modern production facilities will be the starting point for a new golden age for the old glue factory.
After acquiring businesses in both Denmark and Sweden, as well as establishing subsidiaries and sales organizations in most of Europe, Dana Lim was ready at the start of the new millennium to bring the good story beyond Europe’s borders.
And today, new chapters are still being written in the exciting story of Dana Lim, who developed from the laundry to the world market.
