US packaging company Ball Corporation has added another collaboration with craft brewers to its portfolio, producing packaging for Norwegian brewer Lervig Aktiebryggeri.
The company now produces cans for craft brewers in Norway, the UK, Ireland, Germany, Spain and Sweden.
The venture with Lervig Aktiebryggeri will employ Ball's 330ml and 500ml cans, containing eight different flavours, including Lucky Jack American Pale Ale, Lucky Jack Grapefruit and Sour Suzy (Berliner Weisse).
The cans sport two-tone colour combinations on a silver background and feature traditional Norwegian characters, such as fishermen and Vikings.
Ball said that the beverage cans are perfect for craft beer, as they are lightweight, maintain complex flavours, and protect the product during transport.
Mike Murphy, brewmaster at Lervig, commented, "Ball was great in helping translate our established designs onto can. As a brewer, we don’t follow the rules, and we’re looking to enhance our packaging by implementing aspects of Ball’s extensive value range, as well as moving more of our products into can."
The cans are produced in the packaging company's Malmö factory, in Sweden, and are exported to 25 countries.
Ball Corporation and its subsidiaries have 18,700 employees worldwide, and its pro-forma net sales for 2015 were $11 billion. It acquired Rexam for approximately $6.1 billion of cash and equity, plus the assumption of approximately $2.4 billion of net debt, in July 2016.
The deal made Ball the largest manufacturer of beverage cans in the world.
© 2017 European Supermarket Magazine – your source for the latest retail news. Article by Karen Henderson. To subscribe to ESM: The European Supermarket Magazine, click here.
