Packaging has a positive impact on the environment by preventing food products – which use vast amounts of energy to produce – from ending up as waste. Measured as 'carbon footprint’, this benefit far outweighs the relatively small negative impact of waste packaging.

More than two-thirds of the cans produced by these Metal Container Corporation (MCC) operations are for leading soft drink companies while the remainder are for AB InBev’s beer brands such as Budweiser and Michelob.

MCC’s remaining five body and two end plants will continue to serve most of A-B Inbev beer can needs, said the Netherlands-based brewer. There are no plans to sell the plants.

Limited volumes of larger 44cl cans made by Ball Packaging Europe are being used in the promotion, in which instructions on the back of the can lead drinkers to a voice-activated freephone helpline that offers advice "on any side effects consumers might be suffering from after consuming Tango".

Speaking exclusively to The Canmaker at the recent Europack Summit in Monte Carlo, the executive, who did not want to be identified, suggested that it "looked likely" that BPA would be banned throughout the US, following pressure from activist groups.

The ‘mini-tender’ offer for about 1.9 percent of Crown’s outstanding common stock has been made by TRC Capital Corporation, a private Canadian investment company.

Because the offer is below the market price, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) says it could catch out unwary stock holders.

Alcoa Russia’s line at Samara, which will also supply the building and construction industries, is the only one of its kind in Russia.

The 60,000 tons per year line completes an investment programme of $750 million in Alcoa’s Russian operations and will serve both domestic customers and those in Europe.

He was opening the beverage can and carton plants built by Ho Chi Minh-based Siagon Beverage Corporation (Sabeco), Vietnam's biggest drinks group.

The plant in the province of Nghe An has capacity to make 450 million cans and 1 billion ends a year. The adjacent plant makes 40 million carton boxes a year.

The technology used enables reductions in waste and energy consumption compared with conventional operations.

Bangkok Can Manufacturing in Thailand, a subsidiary of Japan’s Toyo Seikan Kaisha, started up in 2008 making TULC (Toyo Ultimate Can) containers using polyester coatings applied to the steel coil before manufacture.

But Stolle says it’s not planning to compete with specialist project engineering firms. There is "no intention of competing with specialists", it said.

Engineers who were installing the line at COFCO subsidiary CPMC’s plant at Hangzhou near Shanghai said they had not been paid from the beginning of March by project integrator Omnitech International, placing doubts on the original October completion date.