Blue Ash, Ohio — Milacron Holdings Corp. soon will be announcing details about a customer for its Klear Can technology, a see-through replacement for metal food cans, CEO Tom Goeke said.
Goeke made his comments in response to a question from a financial analyst in Milacron's Feb. 23 conference call to release full-year 2016 financial results.
Klear Can will be on store shelves by the end of the first quarter, Goeke said. He said Milacron has a commitment from the customer to give out information to the media, but not before the product appears on grocery stores.
“So we should have some follow-up in Q1,” he said.
Plastics News reported last year that Del Monte Pacific Ltd. was in final talks for the Klear Can. Del Monte Pacific, a big supplier of pineapple, tomatoes and fruit juice, is listed on stock exchanges in Singapore and the Philippines.
Milacron and Del Monte Pacific have declined to confirm the story.
Meanwhile, a competing plastic can, Sonoco Products Co.'s TruVue, hit grocery shelves about three months ago, holding McCall Farms' line of beans at Harris Teeter and Ingles grocery stores in the southeastern United States.
Without naming TruVue, Goeke said: “It's good for the industry that there is consideration to go from a metal can to a transparent container.”
In other news from the conference call, Goeke said new products for single-use coffee pods, like the K-cup, are starting up this month.
“That's going quite well,” he said. Last July, Milacron announced the coffee pod commercialization with a first customer, using the machinery company's Kortec coinjection molding technology. Milacron has so far not identified the customer.