Crown Holdings, Inc. has announced a collaboration with Velox Ltd. to provide beverage brands with game-changing digital decoration technology for both straight wall and necked aluminum cans.

Crown and Velox brought together their expertise to unlock new possibilities for major brands wishing to increase product offerings, as well as smaller producers taking advantage of the benefits of fully recyclable beverage cans.

The technology and solution deliver market firsts and create greater brand design options with running speeds over five times faster than existing digital solutions and proprietary features, including the ability to print up to 14 simultaneous colors and embellishments such as gloss, matte and embossing on nearly the entire surface area of the can.

Crown and Velox recognize a growing global demand from beverage brands for more innovative digital decoration solutions. Brands can now take advantage of the technology and solutions’ myriad benefits, particularly 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 a variety of SKUs.

The Velox technology and solutions also provide a photorealistic quality and wider color gamut for graphics, the ability to quickly produce an accurate print proof of a package and, in the case of smaller brands, improved sustainability over traditional plastic shrink wrap and labels that significantly hinder the aluminum can recycling process.

“Beverage producers continue to select aluminum cans for consumer convenience, long shelf-lives, infinite recyclability and 360-degree shelf appeal,” said Dan Abramowicz, EVP, technology and regulatory affairs at Crown. “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. From speed to quality to design features, the technology truly pushes the limits of digital printing for beverage cans, and we look forward to introducing this exciting innovation to our partners around the world.”

Unique to the technology and solution is a running speed of up to 500 cans per minute, a rate significantly higher than previous limits of 90 cans per minute for comparable-quality digitally printed beverage cans.

The technology also prints effectively onto the can surface with or without a white basecoat, streamlining production and allowing the use of translucent inks and/or the metal substrate to shine through graphics when desired. Additionally, it enables printing of images – for the first time – on both the can neck and chime, increasing branding real estate and consumer appeal.

“Never before has the beverage market realized the speeds or design capabilities our direct-to-shape digital decoration solution now delivers for metal beverage cans,” said Marian Cofler, CEO and Co-founder at Velox. “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.”

Commercial can production utilizing the technology is anticipated within 2022, following ongoing pilot testing in Crown’s global R&D Centre in Wantage, UK.