November 2019

Global Production | page 6

Aluminium Cans Still at a High LevelAEROBAL Contest | page 12

Winners of the World Aluminium Aerosol Can Award

Interview | page 22

AEROBAL President Reflects on the Assets of Aluminium Cans

Best Practise | page 2 – 30

Ideas and Innovations from Around the World

online magazine

CAN CAN DESIGN DESIGN IN A IN A NEW NEW LIGHTLIGHTM

ARKE

TING

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Can manufacturer Ball from the USA has succeeded in creating a real innovation with the Axe Martin Garrix black light can from Unilever. The company benefit-ed from the experience of its beverage division, which had already developed a black light lithography solution for a customer and this has now been slight-ly modified and further developed for the Axe project. Axe’s partnership with Martin Garrix, the world-famous Dutch DJ and producer, was a perfect fit: Garrix appeals to the target group with his music and his shows. The promotion and coverage of his live shows depict an environment where Garrix literally illumi-nates the night with his branded lighting. So what could be more appropriate for extending this branding to his shelf presence than to mimic that illumination on an aerosol can. The challenging task to incorporate the producer’s black light technique into the can design was perfectly implemented thanks to the diligence of Ball’s skilled aerosol packaging reprographic team and learning from the pro-ducer’s beverage bottle business.The Axe Martin Garrix black light can was marketed as limited editions in the ma-jor Latin American markets at the end of 2018. To promote the partnership and the product launch, Axe and the artist released a music video that features the can and at the last count this had already been viewed over 50 million times. The partnership between Axe and Garrix ladders up to a larger music platform initia-tive from Axe featuring many well-known and emerging artists.

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A COLOURFUL EYE-CATCHER

VISUAL PRESENCE

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Unilever’s Lux Botanicals shower mousse with two charming extracts, fig and geranium and lotus and honey, is designed for the body care markets of the Middle East. The aerosol cans are produced by Perfektüp in Turkey. The cans impress at first glance with their attractive design and this is also excellently implemented in print: with its vitality, the filigreed design featuring a decorative floral and flower pattern with soft tone transitions and sophisticated shadow play on the leaves reflects the product promise of a natural and refreshing shower experience. At the same time, the design’s clear and pure appeal points to the high-quality natural ingredients and thus enhances the product’s perceived value. The rich colours in pink and purple not only add a feminine touch to the ap-pearance, but also ensure an irresistible visual presence at the point of sale.

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There has been rapid growth in the production of aluminium aerosol cans worldwide in the recent past, with a new produc-tion record being reported year after year. However, accord-ing to AEROBAL, the International Organisation of Aluminium Aerosol Container Manufacturers, this development did not continue in the first half of 2019: year-on-year its member companies’ production fell by about one per cent to three billion cans.

For AEROBAL’s secretary general Gregor Spengler this is hardly surprising given the more difficult economic environ-ment worldwide, which is also impacting the mood generally: “Nobody could seriously expect a successful trend like the one the aluminium aerosol can has enjoyed in recent years to continue unabated and ignore global economic developments. Demand for aluminium aerosol cans is nevertheless still at a high level.”

Demand is still increasing in European countries outside the EU and also in the Middle East. By contrast, demand has calmed down in particular in Western Europe, North America

AEROBAL: GLOBAL PRODUCTION OF ALUMINIUM AEROSOL CANS RELATIVELY STABLE IN H1/2019

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and the Asian markets. Deodorants remain the most impor-tant area of use with a market share of around 60 per cent. A declining trend in the hair care sector is being offset by slight gains in the pharmaceutical field.

Overall, Gregor Spengler notes a certain reluctance on the part of the industry’s clients compared with the record-break-ing years. Existing inventories have been reduced and in ad-dition there are signs of a trend towards packaging that has a less complex design. Given the restrained order intake and the weakness of the global economy, AEROBAL’s expectations for 2019 as a whole are therefore rather subdued.

Despite this note of caution, AEROBAL’s president Leopold Werdich believes that the industry and especially the mem-ber companies of AEROBAL are nevertheless well positioned: “Besides the weak phase in the global economy, the most important challenges facing our industry are the development of new, innovative alloys and the use of eco-friendly coating technologies. We are also focussing, of course, on improving the recycling of aerosol cans around the globe. But here in particular, where recyclability and genuine sustainability are called for, aerosol cans made of aluminium offer clear advan-tages over other materials. This is another reason why we at AEROBAL regard future challenges more as an opportunity to further strengthen and expand the position of the aluminium aerosol can in the global packaging market of the future.

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GUARANTEED TO BE HEALTHY

AND PUREBPA-

FREE

GUARANTEED TO BE HEALTHY

AND PUREBPA-

FREE

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Montbrunn Thermal Spring Water is a prod-uct for soothing and refreshing irritated skin. Due to consumer concerns and reser-vations about bisphenol A (BPA), the de-clared aim was to use a BPA-free container for the product. The aluminium aerosol cans are now supplied by Swiss manufac-turer Nussbaum. Even though epoxy resins containing BPA are still used as coatings in many containers for food, cosmetics and pharmaceuticals, Nussbaum has dispensed with the use of such materials completely: all the linings applied both inside and out-side the Montbrunn aluminium can as well as the inks used for decoration are BPA non-intent. This means it is not only allowed to use a ‘Flacon sans bisphenol’ label on the aluminium aerosol can: the can also conveys Montbrunn’s philosophy for healthy and pure products perfectly and in a credible manner.

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DESIGN EVOKES MAGICAL FASCINATION

SHAP

EDESIGN EVOKES MAGICAL FASCINATION

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The Algerian company Sarl Complexe Industrial de Cosmeti-que has started its first aerosol body spray project with Her-ena Safi. It is planning to launch the spray not only in Algeria but also in London, Paris and Beirut. The design and packag-ing requirements for the new product were correspondingly stringent. That is the reason why the company decided against using an aerosol can with a standard shape and opted instead for a very distinctive and uniquely shaped aluminium can that allows the brand to reveal its fascination and magic comple-tely. The cans are supplied by Aryum Aluminium Aerosols of

Turkey. They have done a great job: they developed a smooth oval shape which was 360° embossed on the top of the alu-minium can. The logo and lettering are even more exclusive and together with the material’s perceived value they create a truly luxurious look. And this extends over the can’s entire design. Fantastic floral patterns, and in particular the name Wild Flowers, seem to float over a breathtaking colour compo-sition. A truly eye-catching design for a splendid appearance at the point of sale.

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AEROBAL PRESENTS WINNERS OF WORLD ALUMINIUM AEROSOL CAN AWARD

AEROBAL PRESENTS WINNERS OF WORLD ALUMINIUM AEROSOL CAN AWARD

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The International Organisation of Aluminium Aerosol Container Manufacturers (AEROBAL) organised its prestigious competition for the world’s best and most innovative aluminium aerosol cans once again this year. A panel comprising editors from renowned specialist publications in the fields of packaging, the aerosol industry and cosmetics selected their respective favourites in two categories: cans already on the market and prototypes. The panel of ten specialist journalists from four different continents chose the following win-ners of the World Aluminium Aerosol Can Award 2019.

AEROBAL’s president Leopold Werdich emphasises that the World Aluminium Aero-sol Can Award inspires creativity, drives innovation and gives the industry new impetus: “Year after year, the AEROBAL competition is the benchmark for the innovative strength of the industry and a reliable indicator of new trends and ideas. This is also a reason why the competition attracts a great deal of interest and meets with a correspondingly positive response from the international packaging media. In recent years, solutions for reducing the weight of cans, breathtaking new shapes and printing techniques with photorealistic print images or fascinating tactile effects have been awarded prizes. Our competition has thus paved the way for many new ideas and improvements to make it to the markets.”

AEROBAL Secretary General Gregor Spengler is also extremely satisfied with the results and quality of this year’s competition: “Our Aluminium Aerosol Can Award once again demonstrates our industry’s high level of performance and the creative potential of our member companies. At the same time, the competition also reflects the wealth of benefits that aluminium aerosol cans have to offer over other comparable packaging materials. Just think of their excellent hygiene standards, their first-rate product protec-tion, their endless recyclability, their high degree of safety and their easy and consumer- friendly use.”

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The winner among the aluminium cans already on the market was Coombs Family Farms Maple Stream produced by Montebello Packaging of Canada. The 7 fl oz (207 ml) can has a special shoul-der shape for convenient handling and was produced with a white base coating in dry offset printed graphics with gloss over varnish. It convinced the judges above all with its extraordinary print quality. One reason for this was without doubt the fact that the can man-ufacturer’s graphics team was involved in this new product devel-opment right from the start – from the concept phase through to the final implementation by the cus-tomer. This really paid off and was reflected more than positively in the print result.

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The customer provided the graph-ics team with a true 4/colour process CMYK file with a lot of overprint. Selected spot colours were used to keep the overprint to a minimum and still obtain the desired printed image. The art-work was very complex, and this meant the graphics team had to interpolate the final artwork for the printed cans to achieve a match with the artwork supplied by the customer. Proprietary colour sep-aration techniques and dry dot screening technology were used to prevent overprinting of the inks. The producer used his dot gain curves to make sure the screened area and screened images were reproduced as closely as possible to the customer’s artwork.

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US manufacturer Ball Corporation was the winner in the prototype category with its innovative 360° technology, which enables a wide range of shapes to be created over the entire circumference of the aluminium can. The technology is not restricted to stock shapes but can also produce the propri-etary shapes that the customer wants. A special graphic design, which is aligned to the respective relief area, further enhances the shape’s visual impact. It results in a can with a strong appearance when viewed from every angle and perspective. At the same time, the shape gives added grip and is thus a user-friendly ergonomic plus.

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The full fascination of the 360° technology only comes into its own when the lithog-raphy and embossing interact perfectly with this process technology. The artwork and the relief area are then combined pre-cisely to further emphasise the depth of the design. This can be seen very nicely in the futuristic can with its clear lines. The graphic elements match the embossing precisely. The human eye is thus seduced into perceiving the difference between the recessed areas and the rest of the can even more clearly. With their playful design and honeycomb motif, the cans demonstrate the fantastic possibilities that are now available thanks to asymmetrical embossing. It means the new 360° technology is opening up a wide spectrum of additional design possibil-ities for the innovative and creative design of aluminium aerosol cans.

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SIMPLE. INTELLIGENT. EFFICIENT.

COM

MUN

ICAT

ION

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The aluminium aerosol cans for Sun Bum’s premium moisturising sunscreen sprays come from Trivium Packaging. The unusual design of the 6 oz/170 g can is eye-catching. The wood-effect graphics printed with a matte over-varnish provides a soft, real-istic depiction in line with the Sun Bum brand and this alone ensures a high level of consumer aware-ness and recognition. But that is not all: graduated tonal values from light to dark are used to de-pict the different sun protection factors of the individual products. This is not only a simple, uncom-plicated but nevertheless effective way to communicate the product’s sun protection factor in an unmis-takable manner: The design idea additionally increases consumer interest and creates a visual unique selling point in the competition for the greatest consumer awareness at the point of sale.

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PERCEIVED VALUE AND PREMIUM APPEALLO

OKPREMIUMLO

OKPREMIUM

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The aluminium cans for Yardley’s new product range come from Indian producer Bharat Containers. Yardley is a renowned brand and has long been an established market player. The brand symbolises high standards of aesthetics and design. For the launch of its new product range, how-ever, the company decided to change its image and revise the design completely. It has achieved this with cans that are printed with the self-design effect of fabric, created using similar colours and a wet-on-wet tech-nique. The labels for the variants have been stylised with the colours of various metals like copper, silver and brass to make them stand out. The result impresses in every respect. The design appears to be elegantly restrained and it catches the eye precisely because of this refined restraint. The suc-cessful look with premium appeal allows you to sense the material’s value and underlines the class of both product and brand.

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Recently the World Aerosols Magazine published an interview with AEROBAL President Leopold Werdich from which we would like to quote some important statements with the permission of the magazine.

Right at the beginning of the interview the AEROBAL President underlined the unique recycling properties of aluminium:

“First of all, aluminium is a so-called permanent material which can be infinitely recycled without loss of quality. More-over, aluminium as a light-weight material saves energy during transport. In addition, aluminium aerosols are made of relatively pure aluminium which is highly demanded on the scrap market. The high scrap value gives a clear incentive to collect and recy-cle the material and to keep it in the loop. Finally, it has to be underlined that 75% of all aluminium produced worldwide up to now is still in use; a claim that no other material can make.”

“THE PREMIUM CHARACTER OF THE MATERIAL ENSURES A VERITABLE VALUE PACKAGING.”

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Besides their remarking environmental friendliness and their convincing sustainability aluminium aerosols excel by a huge variety of advantages thanks to their material properties:

“The aluminium can’s monobloc-technology provides less sources of potential risks than cans consisting of more parts. Aluminium has excellent barrier prop-erties so that on the one hand no adverse external influences (light, air, mois-ture) are able to jeopardize the content. On the other hand no valuable, volatile ingredients can escape from the container. So there is no unwanted waste of re-sources which is extremely relevant because the environmental impact of pack-aging is far below that of product waste. In this context it is also worthwhile noting that the aerosol system allows to empty the product completely which also saves valuable resources. Moreover, compared to other packaging, the aerosol system enables customers to do without preservatives and to achieve a longer product lifetime thanks to its perfect protection performance.”

According to the AEROBAL President these assets also explain the big success of aluminium aerosols in the important cosmetics market. On top of that customers benefit from the can producers’ great flexibility:

“The cosmetics industry with its fast moving consumer goods is dominated by relatively small lot sizes. Smaller lot sizes can economically better be achieved with flexible production technology. In this context the impact extrusion tech-nology is the right answer to quickly changing market trends and different for-mats with regular changeovers. With shelf impact and brand recognition being key requirements of the cosmetics industry, aluminium cans offer excellent de-sign options as regards shape and print. The premium character of the material ensures a veritable value packaging.”

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In the course of the interview Mr. Werdich also addressed the perfect printability of aluminium cans:

“All conventional and advanced printing technologies are possible with alu-minium cans. In general, printing on aluminium as substrate gives the image more brilliance. It is possible to play with the elegant shine of the material (brushed or unbrushed) when decorating the can or using different overvar-nishes. High-quality printings such as photorealistic images, matt and gloss, glow-in-the-dark, spot-varnishing/colouring, colour-shifting or tactile effects or thermo-chromatic inks give the product a versatile and up-market appearance. Features for connected packaging are also possible to allow for requirements of traceability, product information, advertising and anti-counterfeiting in an increasingly digital world.”

Looking into the future, the AEROBAL President stressed the vivid innovative spirit of AEROBAL members. The following developments were highlighted:

“Continuous downgauging with new alloys is definitely one of the ongoing trends. Other continuous innovations are complex shaping even with modified alloys, 360° embossing and the development of alternative lacquer systems to BPA-based and NMP-based coating systems. Digital printing which is al-ready widely used in other industries still is in its infancy in our industry, but it is a promising technology for the future. In addition, UV printing could offer many environmental benefits and energy savings because no ovens are needed during the process. Another innovation is layer-wide packing combined with full body inspection. This development is closely linked to the downgauging of the can. New alloys are developed in close cooperation with slug manufacturers and machine producers because modified alloys might need, for example, mod-ified tools and different ways to pack.

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EXCELLENT PRINT

QUALITY

PHOT

OREL

ISM

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The Odor-X Fresh Blast air freshener reliably eliminates bad odours produced by smoke, food, animals, spilled drinks or many other causes for up to thirty days. The dual valve and nozzle mechanism allows the product to be sprayed continuously into the car while the air conditioning is running in the recycle-air mode, or it can be used for spot applications. Montebello Packaging of Can-ada produces the highly stable 45 x 135 mm aluminium cans. They have a DOT 2Q pres-sure rating and are produced using an oval shoulder profile, machine curl for maximum seal integrity, epoxy phenolic, white base overcoating and a clear gloss over-varnish. Their outstanding print quality is particu-larly impressive: the very bright green was achieved by working with the ink vendor, and the very solid black background was obtained using a double hit (two layers) of the background ink colour. The photograph-ic image of the smoke pattern is screened at 133 lpi (lines per inch) and is coupled with in-house colour management of the image for dry offset printing. The print on this alu-minium can is really outstanding and results in a truly photorealistic image.

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TECHNOLOGYRECYCLING AND SUSTAINABILITY

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The aluminium cans for Dove Men+Care’s anti-perspirant spray are manufactured by Tubex Germany. Even though they may seem like a normal can at first glance, they are nevertheless unusual in many respects: they are manufactured using a new patented slug alloy, which is a joint development of Tubex with the slug supplier Neuman Aluminium. The benefit of the pat-ented slugs is that they can already use up to 25 per cent and more recycled post-consumer scrap. Another improvement on the previous standard can is the new can’s weight, which could be reduced by almost 20 per cent by decreasing the wall thickness and optimising the shoulder shape. However, the reduced wall thickness has made the new cans more sus-ceptible to denting during packing and transport. Tubex has overcome this by using a new packing technique: the cans are placed on pallets instead of being packed in bundles. Camer-as and sensors supervise the fully automatic state-of-the-art packing process, with robots placing the cans onto the pallets. An additional advantage of this new technique is that 15 per cent more cans now fit onto a pallet and 15 per cent more pal-lets into a truck, thus reducing the number of pallets and the storage area required at the same time. All in all, this means there is a noticeable reduction in CO2 emissions.

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BREATHTAKING BREATHTAKING BLAZE BLAZE

OF COLOUROF COLOUR

ARTWORKARTWORKpage 29

The US company Sexy Hair Concepts, a division of Henkel Corporation, is presenting its Big Sexy hair-spray series with new motifs and modified artwork. The series is mainly intended for the professional hair styling market. CCL Container from the USA produces the large-volume aluminium cans, which have a 59 x 245 mm format. The sheer size of the cans alone would attract attention, but their unusual and striking design makes them a real eye-catcher that hardly anyone can miss. The cans were designed with sophisticated graphics representing a posturized appearance using eight colours to simulate a process printing technique. Bright vibrant colours were se-lected and allowed to intertwine to give the can its jump-off-the-shelf look. The can’s visual presence is truly breathtaking, with an emotional blaze of colour reminiscent of the explosive dynamics of expressive painting. In addition to the complex colour build, fine detail was also incorporated; this was made possible by the high quality, high resolution printing plates, which allowed extremely small text and undersized barcodes to be used.

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IMPR

INT Publisher

Gesamtverband der Aluminiumindustrie e.V. (GDA) International Organisation of Aluminium Aerosol Container Manufacturers (AEROBAL) Fritz-Vomfelde-Straße 30 D-40547 Düsseldorf Germany fon +49 211 4796144 mail aerobal@aluinfo.de web www.aerobal.org

Editorial responsibilityMarius Baader Executive Member of the GDA Managing Board

EditorsGregor Spengler, AEROBAL Secretary General Norbert Pravato, Pravato + Team GmbH

Concept and designPravato + Team GmbH

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You can find comprehensive infor-mation about aluminium aerosol cans on our website: about their production according to highest quality standards and their unique characteristics as packaging solu-tion; facts about their excellent environmental performance; the development of the most impor-tant markets and current trends and innovations.

And, of course, you will find there the right people to an-swer your questions, either at the AEROBAL Secretariat or at one of our AEROBAL member compa-nies around the globe, quickly and easily with the help of the current membership list. In short: There are many good reasons to visit our website. Give it a try. We would appreciate it: www.aerobal.org

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