1. Materials and processing

1.1 Steel-based materials

Everyone thinks they know steel. Everyone thinks it's a heavy material, reserved for heavy industry. Yet its great flexibility and strength make it a particularly innovative and adaptable material.

Over the last fifteen years, steel has entered a new phase of development thanks to revolutionary technical advances. Continuous casting, the double cold reduction process and vacuum treatment have increased steel quality, homogeneity, internal cleanliness and, consequently, plasticity. Strength and malleability have increased, and packaging thicknesses have been reduced for the same or better performance. We're already into the fifth generation of steel food cans!

In 95% of cases, the techniques used today did not...