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Crown Food Europe's Easylift tab for cans was the unanimous winner of the supreme gold award at this year's Metal Packaging Manufacturers' Association (MPMA) Best in Metal Awards.

The Easylift tab, which also took gold awards for Functionality and Technical Innovation, builds on the company's Eole technology and was trialled with Nestlé pet food in the Netherlands.

It features a generous gap between the can lid and ring pull tab, allowing the can to be opened more easily and providing greater convenience for older people, children and the physically impaired.

MPMA director Tony Woods said Easylift was a "very significant development in the high-volume food can market".

Woods said Impress Metal Packaging's drawn aluminium 4oz can with Easy peel lid, made for Daesang's Club luncheon meat, was another "superb example of user-friendly, convenience packaging". It won gold in the Food section and was runner-up in the Functionality category.

Impress Metal Packaging also won the gold award for Sustainability for components for lever lid paint cans for general use. The firm said the new-style rings not only made its paint cans easier to open, but also reduced its use of tinplate by 500 tonnes.

Crown Aerosols Europe was another prolific winner, taking gold in the New Products/Market Applications category and silver in Consumer Appeal, as well as winning the Aerosols section for a screwdriver-shaped aerosol for WERA.

Other winners included Rexam Beverage Can, for an aluminium can with registered deboss for Heineken, which took the Alcoholic Beverages award and silver in the Consumer Appeal section; and Roberts Metal Packaging, which took the Health & Beauty gold award for an embossed aluminium container for Lush handmade shampoo bars.

The gold winner in the Consumer Appeal category was a decorative steel container for Glenfiddich whisky designed by Lewis Moberly and produced by Crown Speciality Packaging for William Grant & Sons.

Woods said all the entries for the awards were "superb", with new shapes, deeper embossing and new paint finishes all "executed to perfection".

The winners were announced at the MPMA's annual dinner, held at Drapers Hall, London.