The Tulip Food Company has developed a new, light, easy to open, long-life packaging that may herald the end of the ubiquitous tin can, that is already facing tough competition from cardboard.

The new packaging allows products to keep for up to two years outside a refrigerator, although there is still some time to go before reaching a tin can shelf life of up to five years. Some 1.8 billion people across the world live without an available refrigerator.The  tin can may soon be on its way out.

Japanese start
Tulip’s new product line will initially contain pork luncheon meat, which is not widespread in Denmark, but the company expects other products may also come online.

After a lengthy development process, and testing in 27 international focus groups, the meat product in its new packaging is to be launched on eight export markets, primarily in Central and South America and Japan.

Tulip Food Company CEO Flemming Enevoldsen says that the lighter packaging has been difficult and complicated to develop, and as a result is not immediately cheaper than the tin can.

But he says it is more environmentally friendly, lighter, easier to open, can be re-closed, can be used in a micro-oven and is easy to stack in a refrigerator.

“Tin cans are a major problem for older people,” says Enevoldsen.

Strength
Technological Institute Head Søren Østergaard says that ease of opening is vital for packaging.

“On the issue of cans, a third of women have problems opening them, and older people have generally bigger problems than younger people,” Østergaard says.

He adds that the strength of the right thumb and forefinger is decisive in whether people can open packaging easily or with difficulty.

Historic packaging
The history of the tin can goes back some 200 years with the offer by Napoleon of a 12,000 franc prize for someone who could develop a method of preserving food for his armies. The French confectioner Nicolas Appert won the prize in 1810 using a sterilisation technique.

In the same year an English inventor Peter Durand patented a tin can, but sold his patent to two other Englishmen – Brian Donkin and John Hall - who opened a canning factory to produce canned goods for the British Army.

Although tin cans are no longer predominantly made of tin, the English language nomer is said to come from the use until the middle of the 20th century of corrosion resistant tinplate steel.

Tulip Food Company
Tulip Food Company produces and sells processed meat products to the domestic and international retail, fast food, food service and food industries. It has sales and representative offices in seven countries and exports across most of the globe.

The company’s roots go back to 1887 and it is now part of the Danish Crown group