Metal: A sustainable solution to food and Beverage packaging

Rapidly changing markets and consumer preferences require continual innovation and adaptation to provide packaging that busy lifestyles demand. For this metal packaging offers a great sustainability, versatility, quality and convenience, which creates exciting opportunities for the industry.

- Ritesh Verma

The metal food can dates from Napoleonic wars, when French industrialist Nicolas Appert invented a food-preserving technique using metal containers sterilized at high temperature. A metal container may range from simply a means of distributing a product to a vehicle with a very precise marketing and technical purpose.

Metal cans are now used extensively in both the food and the beverages industries where they compete with containers made of glass, plastic, cardboard or composites. Metal containers are widely used in food and beverage market segment because of cost effectiveness durability and protection of the content.

The packaging forms of metal containers are including: three piece cans, bottle closure, two-piece can, food trays, metal drum, and metal foils. Three-piece tinplate containers were used for many years for the packaging of carbonated beverages.

The highly corrosive nature of carbonated soft drinks demanded complete protection of the metal container from the product by the use of one or more coating of an impermeable enamel system.

In the case of processed foods, it must ensure a safe pack, which will be no risk to public health, and be sufficiently strong to maintain its integrity. Metal cans for food must be resistant enough to compensate for the loss of internal pressure resulting from high-temperature sterilization.

Mechanical properties of metal container