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Steel packing protects the contents from oxygen, light, and other external elements. This solid barrier preserves the food’s nutritional properties. It offers maximum convenience, and is 100 per cent recyclable. Steel is an excellent packaging material due to its strength, formability and durability. It enables high-speed filling operations, resulting in excellent cost efficiencies. Through innovation, the weight of steel packaging has been reduced and today’s solutions include easy-open ends on a multitude of packaging shapes and sizes.

Photo of food and pet food cans Photo of beverage cans Photo of aerosols Photo of crown corks and closures
Food and pet food cans  Beverage cans  Aerosols  Crown corks and closures 

Images courtesy of Rasselstein

All packaging steels are produced under standard specifications. Some of these standards are:

  • China: GB/T2520-2000
  • Europe: EN 10202 (also used in South Africa and partly in Asia)
  • Japan: JIS G 3303 (also very popular in India and rest of Asia)
  • North America: ASTM 623/624

Steps in the steel packaging production process

Steel strip used for packaging applications typically have gauges (thicknesses) ranging from 0.13 to 0.50 mm, which is much thinner than those used in building or automotive applications. Metallic coatings for packaging steel are usually tin and chromium.

Typical steel packaging gauges

Roll the cursor over the picture to see how different thickness strip is used for different applications.

Steel enables packaging to withstand pressure

Learning Outcomes for this Section

After completing this section, you should be able to:

  • List some of the key stages in the development of food and beverage cans
  • Describe the production of tinplate and some other packaging steels
  • Explain the process steps of manufacturing a can from tinplate
  • List various design possibilities and different packaging solutions
  • Explain some of the environmental benefits of steel for packaging, especially recycling

References

  • The British Standards Institution,  BS EN 10202:2001 - Cold reduced tinmill products. Electrolytic tinplate…, , BS EN 10202:2001 Standard icon

External Links

World Steel Association, MATTER and their partners are not responsible for the content of external sites.

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