Final Thoughts
June 18, 2026
Closing a gap in beverage cans
Written by Stephanie Ritenbaugh
Those of us in the aluminum space know the advantages of beverage cans. They’re lightweight, shatterproof, stackable. They can be chilled quickly and, of course, recycled repeatedly.
But once you open one, you’re kind of stuck with a drink you can’t close up again. You can buy things like silicone tops to cover an open can. Aluminum bottles are on the market but are outnumbered by the more familiar 12-ounce cans of seltzers and beers on store shelves.
Canovation is one of the companies working to fill that gap.
The Fort Lauderdale company this month announced a collaboration with Canpack, a global packaging manufacturer, to help bring its CanReseal technology toward commercialization and pilot-scale deployment.
“We are at an inflection point of moving from the laboratory space with our development and truly bringing it out from the prototype phase into a minimal viable product,” Canovation Chief Operating Officer Jeff Grajewski told AMU. “Canpack is going to assist us with validating the minimal viable product requirements with their customers and other customers that we’ve been speaking to.”
CanReseal’s technology can be integrated into existing systems, Grajewski said. Its endcaps, which can essentially turn a beverage can into a bottle, are able to fit onto standardized can bodies.
“What’s really exciting is that it’s basically falling into the same equipment that can makers already use today for those efficiencies,” Grajewski said. “The economics of it being scalable that way doesn’t make this a gimmick sort of thing, or a niche kind of thing, but rather this is something that can be adapted worldwide to very standardized equipment that is highly efficient and high speed.”
Grajewski said the product should reach full commercialization in 24 to 30 months.
Recyclability
Grajewski said CanReseal ends are made from the same series of 3xxx alloy as the can bodies, typically 3014, making it easier to recycle the whole item and produce a product with 100% recycled content.
Currently, beverage can end stock and tab stock are typically made from a high-magnesium-content 5182 alloy, which keeps the global cap on post-consumer recycled content at about 71%.
Usability
In customer testing, the company learned about some use cases it had not previously considered. One was protecting drinks if someone is at a party and needs to step away.
Another is hygeine. A member of another focus group pointed out that “every time she buys a can, the first thing she does is wipes off the top of it, because the drinking surface is completely exposed,” Grajewski noted.
Canovation is also backed by development partner Stolle Machinery Company LLC, which specializes in can-making equipment and tooling solutions.
