Steel packaging for food has its origin linked to wars. Lack of nutrition caused warriors' death and diseases. Because of that, Napoleon Bonaparte ordered containers to be developed so as to keep and transport food supplies as far as the battlefield.
In 1810, the French Peter Durant patented a container lined with tin, the future can. Durant sold his patent in 1811 to the English company Donkin, Hall & Gamble, which produced, for the Navy, the first steel packaging for food.
Retail sales in 1830 included tomatoes, sardines and peas in cans. At that time, housewives used a hammer and a chisel to open them. Cans became more popular a century later, with the improvement of the canning process, and in 1935 the first canned beer was launched.
The two-piece steel can for drinks appeared at the beginning of the 60's, in the United States, thank to the efforts of Kaiser Aluminium and Reynolds Metals. After that, steel producers in Europe developed the DWI steel, which allowed the production of two-piece steel cans for beverage.
Did you know that...?
» 31 empty steel cans are equivalent to 1 kg of steel;
» A steel can weighs 34 grams;
» In order to produce a ton of steel cans for drinks, only 5.6 MgW/ton/h and 40 liters of water are used;
» Degradation time for steel cans is from 8 months to 3.6 years at the seaside, according to NUTEC – Industrial Technology Center Foundation;
» When degraded, steel cans return to nature as iron ore;
» Silicon used for closing can (body and top) during sealing is 100% water based;
» For every 75 recycled steel cans, one tree is not transformed into charcoal.
