Crown and Velox excel metal can design with 360-degree digital decorator

13 Oct 2021 --- Crown is joining forces with Velox to provide beverage brands with game-changing digital decoration technology for straight wall and necked aluminum cans.

The technology creates greater brand design options with running speeds over five times faster than existing digital solutions and proprietary features, says Crown.

The solution boasts the ability to print up to 14 simultaneous colors and embellishments, such as gloss, matte and embossing, on nearly the entire surface area of the can. 

Additionally, it enables printing of images – “for the first time” – on both the can neck and chime, increasing branding real estate and consumer appeal.

“Beverage producers continue to select aluminum cans for consumer convenience, long shelf lives, infinite recyclability and 360-degree shelf appeal,” says Dan Abramowicz, executive vice president, technology and regulatory affairs at Crown. 

“The high-speed, dynamic solution we are debuting with Velox makes these benefits more accessible to brands of all sizes and across multiple product categories. From speed to quality to design features, the technology pushes the limits of digital printing for beverage cans.”

Crown has completed the development of the digital printing machine. Commercial can production utilizing the technology is anticipated in 2022, following ongoing pilot testing in the company’s global R&D Centre in Wantage, UK.

Crown and Velox deliver “market-firsts” for production speeds, design capabilities and flexibility for beverage brands.Speed to market
Velox’s digital decorations are particularly useful for lower production volumes that do not meet the constraints of traditional printing, such as small-batch varieties, short-run seasonal and promotional products or multipacks containing a variety of SKUs. 

Unique to the technology and solution is a running speed of up to 500 cans per minute, a rate significantly higher than previous limits of 90 cans per minute for comparable-quality digitally printed beverage cans. 

“Never before has the beverage market realized the speeds or design capabilities our direct-to-shape digital decoration solution now delivers for metal beverage cans,” says Marian Cofler, CEO and co-founder at Velox. 

Printing power
The Velox technology and solutions also provide a photorealistic quality and wider color gamut for graphics and the ability to quickly produce an accurate print proof of a package. 

Smaller brands can also benefit from improved environmental sustainability over traditional plastic shrink wrap and labels that significantly hinder the aluminum can recycling process.

The technology prints effectively onto the can surface with or without a white basecoat, streamlining production and allowing the use of translucent inks or the metal substrate to shine through graphics when desired. 

Crown in the news
PackagingInsights recently explored the latest in Crown’s aluminum beverage can innovation in a wide-ranging Special Report.

In August, Crown teamed up with Italian wine producer Zai Urban Europe to bring a line of canned wine products to the country’s traditional market. The aluminum cans are illustrated with depictions of a futuristic world where environmental destruction has rendered wine cultivation impossible. 

Crown Packaging Europe also emphasized the environmental benefits of using metal in place of plastic in the expanding ready meal market. 

Edited by Anni Schleicher