In the last four years, can-making capacity in India has risen dramatically as has demand from leading beverage and consumer product companies in the country. With the installation of new filling lines by brand owners and by contract packaging companies, all the new integrated can-making lines installed and successfully commissioned in recent years are running to capacity.
The major breakthrough in the Indian market has been the installation of a second Mall Herlan CMC 200 integrated line at Casablanca at Bhiwadi in North India in 2013-14 and the first line CMC 200 at the new Ball India plant in Sanand, Gujarat in October 2015. A fourth new CMC 200 integrated can making and decoration line is under installation at Greater Noida and should be commissioned by the beginning of June.
A CMC 200 line with an output capacity of 200 cans a minute, or approximately 5 million cans a month, starts by can forming from a slug of metal and then trims, brushes and decorates in an integrated inline operation. The decoration generally consists of a base coat, printing and varnishing. The global success of metal packaging in recent years comes from the development of new coatings. At Metpack 2017, several companies are speaking about their new coatings for food contact and other sensitive uses—about bisphenol-free coating for food and beverage contact containers.
In addition, a new 2-piece beverage can-making line has come up near Colombo in Sri Lanka, in partnership between the EasyPac-Can Ends group and the Sri Lankan cricketer Muttiah Muralitharan. This line for producing aluminum can in 185, 250, 300, 330 and 550 ml sizes is being used by local beverage makers and also for exports to India and Bangladesh. New developments include bottle-shaped cans, screw-top closures, embossed surfaces and the production of smaller and yet smaller metal containers. Other innovations at Metpac seen so far include special printed foil lids and pull-top closures.
