News

Two packaging companies claim to be the first to produce microwaveable steel packs.

Ball Corporation, the US producer of metal and PET food and beverage containers, has worked with engineers from its aerospace division to develop the Fusion-Tek can.

Meanwhile, French firm Arcelor Packaging has teamed up with European packaging manufacturers to develop Creasteel, a steel with “excellent, deep-drawing performance” that may be converted into “complex, eye-catching packaging shapes”.

Ball’s Fusion-Tek can has a diameter of about 9cm and holds approximately 430g of product. It is suitable for ready-to-eat meals and convenience foods such as soups, stews and pasta.

Jennifer Hoover, marketing communications manager at Ball Packaging Products, said the pack had steel can walls and could be supplied with an EZ Open top end or whatever type of can top end the customer would prefer to use as well as a multilayer PP/EVOH can base, plastic overcap and foam label. Unlike a standard steel food tin, which cannot be heated in a microwave because the energy cannot pass through steel, the Fusion-Tek’s plastic can base allows the energy to pass through to the product inside the can, allowing it to be fully heated in two to three minutes.

Arcelor Packaging said tall, narrow containers resulted in poorly heated food, while broad, shallow containers with wide openings were ideal for being heated in a microwave. In tests, the firm said food in steel reheated “more evenly” in a microwave oven than in plastic containers.

Ball is focused on rolling Fusion-Tek out in North America within the next year, but “it has neither the intent, nor the infrastructure, to sell microwaveable cans in Europe,” according to Hoover. Arcelor expects European applications in the food sector within 12 months.