Novelis Inc., an aluminum solutions provider and the world’s largest aluminum recycler and manufacturer of beverage can sheet, announced the company’s new laminated aluminum surfaces for beverage can ends. This innovative application improves beverage container appearance, increases production process efficiencies and lowers CO2 emissions for European beverage brands and can makers. As a result, it further advances Novelis’ leadership in the growing market for aluminum beverage packaging.
Colored aluminum beverage can ends, especially black, are particularly popular for new and innovative beverage products and energy drinks. However, producing lacquered, black ends also poses challenges in terms of color stability and can makers’ production processes.
High quality surfaces and color stability are especially important for the premium beverage segments. Novelis’ new aluminum sheet comes with a black laminating film. The laminating film is free of Bisphenol A (BPA) and per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) and meets all food and beverage industry requirements.
At Novelis’ Göttingen site in Germany, which specializes in rolled aluminum surface finishing, the laminating film is applied by a combination of pressure and heat.
For beverage can makers, adoption of the laminated sheet is simple, as the production of laminated ends does not require any can line retooling. In fact, it requires less cleaning, leading to increased productivity.
Novelis’ product innovation supports can makers and beverage brands in reaching their sustainability goals. The lamination of aluminum coils for can ends reduces CO2 emissions by 33 percent, compared to the conventional liquid coating, as the lamination process requires less heat and chemicals.
Laminated ends have no adverse impact on beverage can recyclability. Similar to the conventional can coating, the laminating film is removed as an organic component in the recycling process by thermal pretreatment and waste heat is reused in the process.
Novelis annually recycles approximately 80 billion used beverage cans worldwide. In Nachterstedt, Saxony-Anhalt, Novelis operates one of the world’s largest, most technologically advanced recycling centers. At the facility, up to 400,000 tons of aluminum scrap is shredded, sorted, thermally decoated, melted, cast and returned to the infinite production cycle each year.
Published in the October 2022 Edition
