First Steel Beverage Can with Temperature Indicator

Coors brewery has already successfully marketed its brands Coors Fine Light and Grolsch in aluminium cans with a temperature indicator.

27/11/07 The first steel beverage can with a temperature indicator which signals to the consumer whether the contents are cold enough to drink was launched on the UK market in summer 2007. The British brewery Coors Brewers Ltd is using the innovative Ball Packaging Europe beverage can to underline the "Cold you can see!" quality feature of its Carling brand. A printed temperature indicator is to be found on the Carling can and this changes colour to blue when the beer has reached the optimal drinking temperature.

The special thermochromic printing inks were originally developed for aluminium cans coated with clear varnish which protects the temperature-sensitive ink from abrasion. It is not necessary and therefore not usual to apply such clear varnish to steel cans. Now Ball Packaging Europe has succeeded in developing a thermochromic printing ink which has enough abrasion resistance to withstand the production and filling processes. In the spring of this year, the first series of steel cans were successfully printed with this new ink.

Coors brewery has already successfully marketed its brands Coors Fine Light and Grolsch in aluminium cans with a temperature indicator. "Thermochromic adds value to the can for the consumer by enabling them to quickly identify which beer is ready to drink," explains Tom Feinson, Customer Marketing Director at Coors. "Consumers measure value by quality and the key quality signal for lager is coldness. Our research shows that 86 percent of consumers think it’s important to drink cold beer and that they are prepared to pay for it."