Here in the good old US of A, we’re used to bottling plants gradually getting more efficient at cost-cutting when it comes to beverage cans. First, they went to aluminum…then the cans began getting more tapered and oddly shaped, etc. Obviously, the major cost in bottling is the packaging itself, not the drink contained therein, so it makes sense that you would want to design a cheap, efficient beverage can. However, when you buy drinks produced in many other countries (the Japanese iced coffee drink I just had, Goya beverage products, etc), they are in those old-style hard-to-crush steel (?) cans. Why don’t these companies switch over to aluminum? Is it actually cheaper to use steel where they are? I’m all for the steel cans, it seems, for some bizarre reason, that the product is more “substantial” when its served in a sturdier container. I guess its like the difference between glass and plastic bottles…but I digress. Why steel instead of aluminum?
Because it travels better? Because they have steel but have to import aluminum? So they can demonstrate macho superiority by crushing their beer cans with one hand (against their foreheads, yet!)?
I dunno about beverage cans, but keep in mind that most canned foods in the US (canned vegetables, soup, Spam[sup]TM[/sup], etc.) still use steel cans.
First a little bit of clarification on types of cans:
Aluminum cans are all created from two pieces, an extruded body created by a draw and iron horizontal press (also known as a bodymaker) from an aluminum sheet, and an end (or top) that is seamed onto the top of the can.
Steel cans come in two flavors, extruded two piece cans and three piece cans. The extruded cans are made in much the same way as the Aluminum cans, but instead of using a sheet they are extruded from a steel slug. These types of cans rare and are pretty expensive to produce. You will typically only see them with products that will be under a great deal of pressure (i.e. aerosols).
Three piece steel cans are much more common and are what you see in other countries. These cans are created from a steel sheet that is rolled into a cylinder and welded along the seam. A top and bottom are then attached to the cylinder.
The three piece cans are much cheaper as far as initial outlay of capital. A 2 piece used aluminum can line can be bought for 50 -100 million dollars, depending on what type of cans you are making (neck size, # of colors on the label, line speed, can thickness, etc…). A 3-piece line can be purchase for less than 20 million (AFAIK).
I worked for 5 years in the 2 piece aluminum can industry for Ball and as a consultant and it was a primary cause of my choice of username on this board. Maybe now that I’m out of industry, I should change it!
The precision involved in manufacture has to be one reason.
The accuracy of the ring pull in its various differant formats requires very expensive plant to obtain such high standards of precision.
Add to this that many countries do not practice recycling much and so the savings to be made using aluminium are not easily realised.
Some landmarks in the history of sealed metal containers.
There is some information about how two-piece cans are made on that site.
Possibly more than you wanted to know about cans
AFAIK, aluminium cans are the standard throughout Europe.
The reason your Japanese coffee came in a steel can may have something to do with the fact that canned coffee is served hot from vending machines in Japan. The again, it may not.
Aluminum cans are the standard for beverages around the world. You might find steel cans in the US as abroad in things which are considered more “food” than “beverage” like tomato juice. But I have never seen soda or beer in steel cans anywhere. I think cost and strength are the main criteria.
Before the nineties, soft drinks were sold in 3-piece steel cans in Ontario province, Canada. They held only 280 mL of drink, quite a bit smaller than our current 355-mL aluminum cans. I think there was some kind of regulatory change that allowed the aluminum cans in.
My experience in the Japan of 10 years ago was that soft-drinks (sodas, punches and such) were always in aluminum. Only coffee and tea came in steel; I suspect for TomH’s cited reasons. (And man, did those cans come out hot!. Too hot, really, to hold in a bare hand. I remember using them just for heat while waiting at unheated rail and bus stops … the same way my Minnesota grandfather, as a child, held hot bricks when he went to school by sleigh.)
Because we’re more advanced than they are?
Probably because the USA, around 30 years ago started thinking about traces of lead in everything, kind of right about the time they realized that the old habit of taking several thousand gallons of used oil and sprinkling it on heavily used dirt roads to lay the dust was not a good idea. The oil actually did not go away after all. House paint got hit the worst, along with industrial paint. but since major industry need tough paint and lead makes it tough, we are still allowed to manufacture lead based paint for heavy industry and military usage.
That spanking new fork lift you use at work is painted with lead paint. So is that big farm tractor you just got.
Anyhow, someone realized that all steel food cans were soldered and this solder contained high lead. Tests showed that people were getting high blood lead levels not just from lead paint in their homes, but the food they ate. Especially acidic foods, like citrus, tomatoes, pine apple, apple juice and so on. That leaches lead from the solder. So, laws were passed requiring can makers to seal cans with a more costly, low lead solder and most canned vegetables are in steel, low lead soldered cans. Many just went to aluminum because it is easier to work with, requires no solder, is lighter, more recyclable and will not poison you. Plus, it will not rust as quickly as steel cans. Even lined steel cans, if the liner is chipped, can rust. Most cans are lined because of this.
I recall the days of pulling old, rusty food cans out of the back of the pantry, bulging with internal pressure because of the rotten food inside gone rotten because of being unlined or the liner chipped somehow. We threw them out with the ginger handling of a live grenade.
We also found the remains of an unsuccessful arctic exploration, and their dump held empty food cans with lead solder heavily applied – because the expedition leader bough the provisions from a provisioner not used to supplying sailors or expeditions- and when they dug up the dead and tested them, they found levels of lead high enough to cause illness and insanity.
See, overseas, they don’t mind poisoning their folks. We mind doing the same here. I figure half of the middle east must buy their canned goods from folks using really, really sloppy, high lead soldering.
Now, the guys who made the law must have been half asleep because while we may not produce products in high lead cans, we can import such nice little goodies. Such as GOYA products. (An American owned company, with plants both in the USA and Mexico.) The plants in the US follow the laws, but the Mex plants ship in lead soldered cans. Remember that when you buy your next can of Quava Nectar made by GOYA.
Also, my grocery store imports German soups, in cans twice as big as normal soup cans. Soup like German bean soup, or German pea soup, and other things. READ THE LABEL before buying any because these soups are OLDIE STYLE – full of enough fats to grease a battleships hull with! (Remember those old pictures of ‘jolly fat’ Germans? That’s how they got that way.) If Hitler had just left them alone, they would have become a nation of fat, jolly tubs, not only not interested in world conquest but to fat to do anything about it.
Plus, those cans are steel and soldered with lead solder, so beware of any steel, imported cans. There are benefits to living in the USA, like congress has realized that unless they pass laws to protect us, there won’t be anyone left to hand over bribes or to extort millions from. A congressman with dead constituents is an unhappy, poor guy.
So, laws are passed. We have better food than in any other nation in the world. Those who disagree bought their food from us.
As TomH noted, aluminium is standard in Europe and in Australia we’ve beenusing them since 1969.
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Like maybe you have some cite for this diatribe? As the man says, fighting this damm ignorance thing is taking longer that originally thought.
Here in Japan, steel is definitely the standard for canned drinks - hot or cold. Canned coffee (which is also sold cold, by the way) almost always comes in a kind of “mini” can made of relatively thick steel, with a seam along the side. Coke and other soft drinks come in seamless steel cans that look just like your typical aluminum cans in the U.S., although they’re a bit thicker and tougher to crush than aluminum cans. They have the word “steel” clearly written on them, so I know I’m not imagining this! Beer cans I’m not sure about.
I’ve often wondered why drink cans here in Japan are steel (not that I know why aluminum is any better - is it easier to recycle?), but I wouldn’t be surprised if the power of the steel industry here is a big part of the reason.
I’ve bought plenty of beverages in aluminum cans in Japan.
Can someone explain Slim-Fast – manufactured in the United States, and sold in three-piece steel cans?
Does Iron City Beer still use steel cans?
All the soda I bought in Europe (Germany, France, and England) a couple years ago came in heavy cans which I’m assuming were steel. Or are their aluminum cans just a lot thicker?
>> All the soda I bought in Europe (Germany, France, and England) a couple years ago came in heavy cans which I’m assuming were steel. Or are their aluminum cans just a lot thicker?
Well, if you can’t tell the difference between steel and aluminum we’re in trouble but I am guessing you are assuming worng and they were aluminum. Yes, you can find thicker aluminum cans still around. Those were the first everywhere and are being gradually replaced by the thinner ones.
Welcome to the SDMB, **A_Shade_OF_Purple-Gray **. Seems like you’ve got a lot to get off your chest. 
Thanks. ( )
Oops! Sorry Australia and G’day mate. I did not mean you guys, for, after all, you gave us those generously sized cans of Fosters beer. Thank you!
On some of my post, I was being humorous, but truthful. Japan, you could be real right about the steel industry power base there because for ages here, our steel makers had a heck of a powerful position in congress.
I never thought about those Slimfast cans, but Equate also is served up in steel. I wonder if there is some ingredient in them that would react with aluminum, because they are vitamin and mineral drinks, designed to slim you down? I really don’t know if aluminum reacts with anything. Steel would react, unless protected, with the acid in tomato juice or citric acid.
Now, for bigger volumes of juice, the cans are lined steel because aluminum is not strong enough and making the can thicker is not cost effective. So, companies who sell you a half gallon or a quart of V-8 use steel, lined with something.
Around about the time everyone was noticing that they were being poisoned by lead, someone else, presumably a thinking man, realized that all of these people who were happily consuming beer and such from antique or new pewter mugs (remember those with the glass in the bottom) were poisoning themselves even faster. Why, you ask. Because pewter is an alloy of lead and tin (?), used in the days of the pilgrims for cheap, easily worked metal utensils!!
Beer and wine leach the lead out of the metal. The longer a pewter mug sits with especially wine in it, the higher the concentration of lead goes. Eating off of pewter plates is worse, because friction from the knife and fork can actually remove minute fragments of lead from the surface and that hot, delicious slab of apple pie served on it is busily leaching more lead from it via the ascorbic acid in the apples!!
So, much to the annoyance of the pewter makers today, the FDA requires warnings on pewter utensils and drinking mugs. I assume you’ve noticed that newer versions are now aluminum. (BTW, the glass bottomed mug was designed originally so as you quaffed your brew, you could see who was sneaking up on you to do you harm.)
Americans, though, are stubborn. As fast as the FDA located lead involved things and put restrictions on them, Americans found more to take their place. Certain ceramic glazes are made with lead, like old Fiestaware. Those bright colors are made so via lead. You’d not expect your dinnerware to poison you, but that would, along with several beautiful and old examples of ceramics from China. They had to broadcast warnings about those also.
Now, oddly, lead crystal, which has a minute amount of lead in it, is safe to a degree but I dimly recall warnings put out about old lead crystal years ago. I have no idea how a glass maker can combine lead and silica to make glass anyhow.
Old style gun ranges, like for the public and cops, came under fire also because those little slugs going into that dirt berm are lead and, in a surprisingly short time turn into tons of lead and leach into the ground water in areas with high water tables. So, locally anyhow, they now put them around old landfills that have to sit for like 100 years before being viable for construction.
If any of you have one of those old lead melting sets from the 60s, hang onto it because they no longer consider those toys. The danger factor with that open topped, electrically powered melting ‘kettle’ is sky high and playing with the lead itself is considered dangerous. I had one as a kid and I just had to, now and then, bite the soft lead. I also recall my fingers being tinged with gray after playing half of the day with the metal and kids usually don’t like to wash their hands very often and there is also lead in the slight vapors that come off of the stuff.
I made lead civil war soldiers and other stuff and got burned a lot.
Lead slag around lead mines used to be used to pave the mining town roads so you can just imagine what it did to the folks. By the time they croaked, there might have been so much lead in their tissues that embalming might not have been necessary. <sarcasm>
Breathe, darlin’. Breathe.