Full circle

The Canmaker

April 2007

Aluminium luncheon meat cans are taking off in Korea, but their development strated much earlier in France before being adopted for Spam in the US. John Nutting reports

At the end of May a new canmaking plant in Korea will start production of drawn aluminium cans for packing luncheon meat. It's the latest development in the increasing use of the lightweight rectangular cans, the most notable customer being Hormel Foods for its Spam range of products in the US, and Bonduelle in Europe for its Jockey range of vegetables.

Although an object of derision in some markets and perhaps now more famous as the subject of the hit musical Spamalot, luncheon meat is a hugely popular product in Korea with a number of brands being sold in local supermarkets. One of the biggest producers is Spam licencee CJ Corporation, a food-to-entertainment group that until now has been buying aluminium cans from Crown in the US, but wanted a local source.

In November 2005 a joint-venture company was formed between Denmark's Glud & Marstrand, which has been supplying tinplate cans in Europe to Spam licencee Tulip International, and Korean canmaker Hanil Can.

Hanil-G&M Ltd, built on a greenfield site near Seoul at Umsung, will have capacity of at least 100 million cans and ends a year using equipment from Service Tool International in the US, Cantech in Germany, Spain's Industrias
Peñalver and USbased Fleetwood.

The official opening next month is expected to be a grand affair attended by Hanil-G&M's chief executive J T Chung and Glud & Marstrand's managing director Joergen Kjaergaard.

Other luncheon meat producers import their aluminium cans from Europe, such as Daesang, which until June last year was using tinplate cans. That was when it switched to drawn aluminium cans made by Impress at its La Flèche plant in France for shipping to Korea.

Impress took another developmental step by instead of offering aluminium fullaperture easy-open ends with two-finger tabs, it supplied a version of its Easy Peel membrane end with a decorated aluminium foil laminate featuring a pull tab. In Korea's supermarkets these are sold in 7oz and 12oz sizes with clear plastics protective lids.

Benefits of these aluminium drawn cans are that they are lighter than equivalent welded-steel rectangular cans and, being deep drawn from pre-coated stock, have less of an environmental impact during manufacture. But, being prone to denting, they require careful handling during processing and transportation.

With perhaps this in mind and increasing demand for the containers, Impress is planning to also set up its own dedicated manufacturing plant for aluminium cans to supply Daesung that will be fully operational in December.

Impress is no latecomer to the party though. The development teams at its R&D centre at Crosmières have connections which go back to when it was Parisbased Pechiney's technical hub almost 20 years ago.

Impress's business development manager Mark Smyth, who worked there, takes up the story. "In the 1980s luncheon meat was retailed in the US in 12oz and 8oz aluminium three-piece cans produced by American Can, with a nylon-based cemented side seam, with a central ring for opening," he recalls.
"Larger cans were tinplate and plastics ham cans for chill distribution were starting. The boundary for two-piece cans was very much a round can under 7oz.

"The tinplate cans had an aluminium anode welded into the ends to ensure a bright ham colour. The point is that producing ham cans was always a challenge.

"When Pechiney acquired American National Can in 1988, one of the main differences in the food can market between Europe and North America was the large range of drawn aluminium food cans in Europe. The boundary in Europe for aluminium in can manufacture was much larger, with cans being produced for seafood, meat, ready meals as well as fruit and vegetables."

Pechiney, which had strong aluminium interests, started work in the early 1990s on developing cans for the US market at Crosmières. But by the mid 1990s its food can interests in the US were sold to Silgan and then in 1997 its European food can business was merged with Schmalbach Lubeca, to form Impress.

In the US, Silgan and Crown took up the development of the aluminium luncheon meat can which was launched by Hormel for Spam in 1998.
"The press, design, and tooling to prove the concept was undertaken in France, where 7oz and 12oz cans were produced for testing," says Smyth.
"The transfer and installation was made by French and American engineers in the US, while the first American twopiece aluminium cans for luncheon meat were produced near Chicago at Silgan's Woodstock plant. It would be a technolgy that would be taken up by Frances' leading vegetable producer Bonduelle, with easy open distortion-printed cans.

Smyth continued: "Many years later at Impress the question of why customers have to use the key to open the can came up, so out came the drawings, however this time for the Korean market, where luncheon meat is quite up market and sometimes used in various festivities. Impress engineers worked with the customer, moving the boundary again for aluminium to have an even more convenient can, this time with an Easy Peel lid."

Daesung didn't leave the marketing of the new luncheon-meat cans to chance, and focused heavily on the can's ease of opening and release of the product in its television advertising.

Now it seems the use of these modern cans is catching. In Europe, Tulip International is said to be "reviewing its policies on cans in the near future", according to a spokesperson. Could that mean that Spam will be packed in aluminium cans in Europe as well?

Who was there first?
The application of lightweight aluminium cans for heat-processed luncheon meat is technically challenging, which is probably why it has taken around 15 years for food companies other than Hormel Foods - manufacturer of Spam which is sold worldwide in volumes of more than 100 million a year - to take them up.

When first launched in 1937 Spam was packed in three-piece welded tinplate cans, establishing a shape and style that has endured for 70 years. In 1983 the tinplate can was replaced with a novel three-piece aluminium design using a nylon-cemented seam, a design that overcame sulphite staining problems. Six years later an aluminium easy-open end was added.

Making a drawn rectangular can from precoated aluminium was first suggested in the early 1990s by American National Can's food can division, which was subsequently acquired by Silgan. The design was originally meant to have distortion-printed graphics, but Hormel Foods opted for roll-fed labels, enabling it to use a widening range of Spam products.

Crown Cork & Seal had access to a labeler along with deep-draw technology that it could adapt which enabled it to steal a march on Silgan. Hormel nonetheless wanted two suppliers and asked Silgan to develop its own line.
Development took about six years. In July 1998, Crown's Massillon, Ohio, plant shipped the first cans to Hormel's Nebraska packing plant, with the first cans from Silgan arriving the following October.

Impress
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