The conference will be opened by Dr. Daniel Abramowicz of CROWN Holdings by delivering a keynote, highlighting technical innovations in metal packaging over the last quarter century. In addition to series of incremental improvements, such as reduced spoilage during manufacturing and lightweighting the industry saw also a number of landmark innovations that have resulted in step-changes in the can’s performance and/or economics. These more radical historical innovations, as well as some yet-to-come, will be featured in the presentation.

Dr. Dimitrios Tsimpoukis of Chrotex in Greece will speak about cost optimisation in the lacquering process by taking a holistic point of view on the factors underlying the quality of the lacquering operations in metal can and cap manufacturing. Highlights are thrown on the interplay among requisite lacquer properties for good quality can manufacturing and their tradeoffs, as revealed through physicochemical concepts. The scope of cost wise optimizing the lacquering processes in can manufacturing is presented, within a framework of safeguarding quality.

Plasmatreat, a technology leader from Germany, developed a technique to improve metal surfaces like tinplate by increasing dramatically the wettability and thus enabling UV materials being directly applied. Backed by project partners in Brazil, the canmaker Brasilata and the coatings manufacturer Actega, Plasmatreat will show how inline plasma jets can substantially improve adhesion of UV coatings.

Neil Finley, Head of Global Food Safety for Henkel (UK) and Chair of the CEPE Can Sector Group, will take on the important and ever-expanding area of migration and regulation by speaking about food contact risk assessment of BPA-NI coatings for metal packaging. This paper will discuss the challenges in performing the risk assessment, novel approaches to demonstrate safety and how improved communication through the supply chain can support BPA-NI coatings for metal packaging.

Chromates are being removed from industrial manufacturing processes in order to further improve the health and safety conditions of workers and employees. Nippon Steel Corporation from Japan has developed a new procedure to passivate tinplate surfaces without hexavalent chromium. Their presentation will cover the main technical information about Process, Product and Food Contact Safety of EZP™ tinplate. All three aspects of this new substrate will be detailed with basic principles, the structure of the Zirkonium passivation layer, the toxicological profile and much more.

Koenig & Bauer MetalPrint GmbH will speak about challenges when developing the next generation of coating machines. Inline measuring technologies have advanced to the point that the re-coupling of data can lead to an automatic process, controlled in a closed loop.