One example is a two-piece can (shown) for shelf-stable salads marketed under the Capitaine Cook subsidiary of French retail group Intermarche. Colorful graphics appeal to consumers and an easy-open pull-tab allows eating straight from the can.
“Our salads in bowl-shaped cans have proved very successful,” said Christophe Bontemps, plant manager at Captaine Cook in the APEAL article. In Europe, design agency Alpha Centauri Design (www.alphacentauri.fr) is working with canmaker Impress (www.impressgroup.com) and steel supplier ArcelorMittal (www.arcelormittal.com) to develop multiform drawn steel containers in bold new shapes for precooked single-serve meals.
Some of the containers are microwaveable. Creative steel can shapes are sometimes produced via advanced manufacturing methods. The newsletter reports that blowforming, a process that involves blow-forming a can preform with pressurized air into a mold shape, and hydroforming, a process that uses water to force a steel tube into a required shape, can form cans into concave, convex, symmetrical, or asymmetrical shapes.
—Jim Butschli
