The partnership will provide beverage brands with advanced digital decoration technology for both straight wall and necked aluminium cans

Velox

Crown and Velox have collaborated to provide digital decoration technology for beverage brands. (Credit: Crown Holdings, Inc.)

Metal packaging manufacturer Crown Holdings has partnered with digital decoration solutions provider Velox to introduce the fastest digital beverage can decorator.

The companies will work together to offer beverage brands advanced digital decoration technology for both straight wall and necked aluminium cans.

Both firms will use their expertise to help major brands increase product offerings and smaller brands benefit from fully recyclable beverage cans.

The partnership will focus on creating brand design options with running speeds over five times faster than existing digital solutions and proprietary features.

It will include the capacity to print up to 14 simultaneous colours and embellishments such as gloss, matte and embossing on the complete surface area of the can.

The technology will help brands address the execution of lower production volumes that do not meet the constraints of traditional printing such as small-batch varieties, short-run seasonal and promotional products or multipacks containing different SKUs.

The Velox technology and solutions offer a photorealistic quality and wider colour gamut for graphics, in addition to rapidly producing a precise print proof for a package.

Additionally, they will help provide smaller brands with improved sustainability over traditional plastic shrink wrap and labels, which significantly affect the aluminium can recycling process.

Crown technology and regulatory affairs executive vice president Dan Abramowicz said: “The high-speed, dynamic solution we are debuting with Velox makes these benefits more accessible to brands of all sizes and across multiple product categories.”

The technology offers a running speed of up to 500 cans per minute, which is higher than previous limits of 90 cans per minute for comparable-quality digitally printed beverage cans.

It also holds the capacity to print onto the can surface with or without a white basecoat, thereby streamlining production and facilitate the use of translucent inks and the metal substrate to shine through graphics when required.

The technology also allows to print images on both the can neck and chime, helping to enhance branding real estate and consumer appeal.

Velox CEO and co-founder Marian Cofler said: “The great collaboration with Crown over recent years allows us to bring our vision to reality and support can manufacturers, fillers and brands seeking greater differentiation for their customers.”

Last month, Crown announced the construction of a new aluminium beverage can manufacturing facility in Nevada, US.