Crown Cork & Seal has signed a licensing agreement with Amcor to supply its SuperEnd beverage can ends in the Australian and New Zealand market places.
SuperEnd is an easy-open end for beverage cans which Crown Cork and Seal claims can provide consumers with improved pourability, drinkability, ease of opening and appearance. It is a stronger, lighter weight end and requires less metal, among other benefits to producers and fillers. Because of the reduction in material used to produce the end it also leads to significant cost reductions.
Crown's 202-diameter SuperEnd is said to enhance package integrity and improve performance. Its patented design provides increased panel strength, which in testing has proved it to be 8-10 psi more buckle resistant than standard 202 ends, thus ensuring integrity throughout pasteurisation, shipping and handling.
Crown has successfully produced and sold over 8 billion SuperEnds in North America and more than 2 billion have already been produced and sold in South Africa by Nampak, under licence from Crown Cork & Seal. The company says that the pace of customer conversions remains strong, and by the end of 2003 it claims it will have an annualised capacity in North America of over 15 billion ends. In addition, Crown will launch SuperEnd in Europe for the first time in early 2003.
Crown Cork & Seal is a leading supplier of packaging products to consumer marketing companies around the world. World headquarters are located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.