Nestlé tests an award-winning can

Consumers on the go continue to drive packaging development around the world. This time it’s a self-heating can of coffee from Nestlé UK.

Cutaway diagram shows just how much space the heat-generating chamber occupies inside the can.
Cutaway diagram shows just how much space the heat-generating chamber occupies inside the can.

Nestlé U.K. has just launched what it’s calling the first self-heating can of prepared coffee. The 211x206 three-piece steel can has an internal volume of 330 mL (11.16 oz). But to make room for the heat-generating chamber that consumes a significant portion of the can’s interior, the can holds just 210 mL (7.1 oz) of liquid. Available in test since late August in central England, the Nescafé Hot When You Want coffees come in two flavors and sell for about £1.20 (U.S.$1.75) in supermarkets, convenience stores, and gas station snack stores.

Designed for consumers on the go, the can has a conventional ring-pull top. Heating is activated by pushing in a button on the base of the can. This produces a chemical reaction between water and quicklime that are contained in separate compartments in the can base. After three minutes, the coffee is heated to 60°C (140°F). Insulating materials keep the consumer’s fingers and lips from being burned, says Nestlé.

According to Nestlé UK commercial project manager Graham White, the potential for self-heating cans is enormous. He reckons that if just half of the 100 billion hot drinks consumed in the UK annually were in self-heating cans, sales could be in the range of 500 million units.

The brains behind this unusual can technology since 1996 has been Thermotic Developments of Manchester, England, represented in the United States by Thermotic Developments Ltd. (New York, NY). The company remains at the center of the assembly process behind the self-heating can.

But manufacturing begins at the Worcester, England, plant of Crown Cork & Seal (Philadelphia, PA). There the steel can body is welded and an unusual steel bottom, drawn to a depth of 70 mm (2 3/4”), is seamed on. This becomes the chamber that holds the heat-generating components. Crown also makes the ring-pull ends and ships cans and ends to a Nestlé plant in Ashborne, England, for filling and application of the ring-pull end.

One other key vendor is Corus (London, England), which supplies the steel Crown uses to make the can components. The steel for the heat-generating chamber has polyethylene terephthalate laminated to both sides via Corus’s Ferrolyte® technology. Soon the PET will be applied more economically as a direct extrusion, rather than a lamination, through a next-generation technology that Corus calls Protact®.

On to filling

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