Products & Services

At 3M Cordova, we make a wide variety of specialty chemicals and adhesives. We blend, react, and purify hundreds of products using a wide variety of technologies throughout the plant. Ultimately, these products are used by other 3M manufacturing facilities or go into industrial, commercial, and consumer applications around the world for a broad range of customers.

Here is a short list of the products made at our Cordova plant:

• Acrylate Monomers
• Acrylate Polymer Adhesives
• Solid and Liquid Epoxy Resins
• Low Adhesion Backsizes
• 3M™ Novec™ Engineered Fluids
• 3M™ Novec™ 1230 Fire Protection Fluid
• Performance Fluids
• Specialty Gases
• Battery Electrolytes

3M Cordova is a high-tech, two-factory facility consisting of Electronic Materials and Internal Materials manufacturing.

Electronic Materials Factory
The Electronic Materials Factory produces products for the electronics and other high-precision industries. These products are used to clean computer equipment because they leave no residue, remove heat in equipment that cannot tolerate contact with water, deposit thin, even lubricant coatings on computer hard drives where the slightest particle could cause the drive to crash, and test electronic parts before and after production.

In addition, other products are sold to battery manufacturers for increasing battery power, to appliance manufacturers for increasing refrigerator insulation efficiency, and to fire protection manufacturers for improving fire extinguishing materials for computer and electronic equipment protection. Our 3M™ Novec™ 1230 Fire Protection Fluid was named one of Time Magazine’s Coolest Inventions of 2004.

Internal Materials Factory
When you think about 3M and its products, what kinds of things come to mind? Chances are the products you think of have a connection to the Internal Materials Factory at Cordova. If you thought of Scotch™ Magic Mending Tape, there’s a connection. We make the adhesive on the back of the tape. If Post-it® Notes came to mind, there’s a connection as well. We make the adhesive that allows you to reposition a Post-it® Note over and over again. If you thought of 3M electrical tapes or medical tapes and guessed that we make the adhesive for those products, you were right again.

Some of the products we make go into 3M medical products, too. These adhesives must be manufactured to very stringent "Good Manufacturing Practices" as established by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. These include adhesives for 3M™ Ioban™ antimicrobial surgical drapes, 3M™ Steri-Strip™ sterile wound closure systems, and 3M™ DuraPrep™ surgical solution. They also include adhesives used in one of the most convenient and comfortable methods to deliver medicines, that is through “transdermal” patches on the skin.

The Internal Materials Factory also serves twenty-seven 3M divisions with several major product lines: corrosion resistant resins, carpet protective chemicals, low adhesion backsizes and ultra violet absorbers for vinyl sheeting.

Corrosion resistant resins are epoxy-based resins that are coated onto large diameter pipes which carry the world's gas and oil supplies. The Alaskan pipeline was one of the first major pipelines that utilized this unique resin to guard against the elements.

"Stain Release" is 3M's trade name for carpet protective chemicals used predominantly in the United States. Our carpet protective products can either be applied to the finished carpet or the individual yarns before the carpet is constructed.

Low adhesion backsizes, commonly called LABs, are the unnoticed and “unsticky” components of Scotch brand tapes. Most consumers assume adhesive tape is constructed by coating a sticky polymer on a strip of film. LABs are coated on the ‘backside’ of the film to prevent the “sticky side” of the film from adhering to it when the tape is wound into rolls. Without backsizes, it would be very difficult to unwind a roll of tape.

Ultraviolet light absorbers are used in sign construction to help prevent discoloration and fading when signs are placed in outdoor environments. Some familiar 3M applications for our UV products are in decorative license plates, traffic signs, and the colorful graphics used on semi-trailers.

These are just a few of the many products made by 3M in which the 3M Cordova Internal Materials Factory plays a vital role.