Exal Design Award Boosts Youngstown Plant

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – A prestigious design award given to Exal Corp.'s coil-to-can aluminum bottle could escalate production of that design from the tens of millions bottles the manufacturer currently turns out here into the billions, an Exal executive said.


Exal and Pittsburgh aluminum giant Alcoa Inc. received a Diamond Award, the top honor presented at the annual DuPont Awards for Packaging Innovation. The lightweight aluminum bottle is manufactured from Alcoa's bottlestock sheet using Exal's C2C technology at its Youngstown plant.


“This year we focused the DuPont Awards program on the essential elements needed to drive breakthroughs in packaging. Innovative new developments, along with cost/waste reduction and improved sustainability, are what packaged goods companies and retailers are seeking to respond to consumer needs,” said Carolann Haznedar, global business and market director, DuPont Packaging & Industrial Polymers, in a press release announcing the award winners.


"It's essentially a validation of a lot of things that we have known about the package," remarked Ed Martin, business development director at Exal. The entries go through "a pretty rigorous judging and vetting process," he said.


The bottles are being manufactured in the tens of millions annually, Martin said, and about half a dozen of Exal's 30 customers -- including beverage giants Coca-Cola and Anheuser-Busch -- are using the design. The containers are mainly used for beverages consumed on site, such as in a bar or restaurant, he explained.


Commercialized in 2008, Exal C2C technology combines the manufacturing speed and light weight of standard drawn and ironed aluminum beverage can technology with shaping technology previously only available with heavier-walled extruded aluminum containers. In the past, all aluminum bottles for the North American market had been made using impact extrusion-based technology.


C2C aluminum bottles made from bottlestock sheet weigh about 40 percent less than impact-extruded aluminum bottles, and while the wall thickness of the C2C container is thinner than the wall of the impact extruded bottle, the C2C bottle is stronger in the areas of container deformation and burst strength, the company said. In addition, the benefit of less metal and a higher run speed offers a competitive price when compared to an impact extruded aluminum beverage bottle. Most importantly, the C2C aluminum bottle is 100 percent recyclable and is “close looped,” meaning, like the aluminum beverage can, it can be remade into a new C2C aluminum bottle again and again.


In its first commercial use of the technology, Exal produced aluminum bottles made from Alcoa bottlestock sheet for ESKA Still and Sparkling Water of Canada. Coca-Cola followed, using the C2C aluminum bottle for several of its Coke soft drink brain Youngstown to its plants around the globe, Martin said.


Exal is considering a $400 million expansion locally. The company's president, Delfin Gibert, said in February he had hoped for a groundbreaking as early as April for the proposed plant, at a site on Salt Springs Road.