For many craft brewers, the limited volumes produced have presented an obstacle in being able to make the transition to aluminum cans, as many can manufacturers require minimum order volume quantities that are out of scope for many craft businesses.
For Pinthouse, a Texas craft brewery, there has been no such problem. The company has been able to utilise CANPACK’s ongoing partnership with Gamer Packaging, a provider of full-service custom packaging solutions. In turn, CANPACK has been tasked with producing cans that enhance the refreshed branding of Pinthouse’s two premium IPA beers.
Training Bines and Electric Jellyfish are crafted from carefully selected blends of hop varieties to deliver balance and drinkability. Their new 473ml (16oz) cans have been given intricate designs with a kaleidoscopic feel to match complex and intriguing flavour profiles. The vintage, somewhat psychedelic graphics, incorporate representations of hop bines and jellyfish on the respective cans.
These beautifully creative cans are produced at CANPACK’s new, state-of-the-art beverage can plant in Olyphant, Pennsylvania, which uses an innovative eight-colour can printing process. While six-color decorators are still standard in the American beverage market, eight-color printing delivers a wider colour gamut with a richer tonal range and smoother gradients, rendering much finer detail and giving the whole design a more vibrant impact.
Brian Deal, Director of Sales at CANPACK US, says: “CANPACK is best placed to produce these high-quality, artistic designs, not only because of the company’s ongoing partnership with Gamer Packaging, but due to our groundbreaking production capabilities. We are proud, once again, to be at the forefront of innovation in can production, helping customers deliver their premium products in packaging that truly tells and sells their stories to today’s discerning consumers.”
Likewise, Pinthouse was eager to share its experience of the creative opportunities of the beverage can. Creative Art Director at Pinthouse, Wes Lebert, takes up the story: “At Pinthouse, we’re all about quality from start to finish – from the raw ingredients we meticulously select to brew our beers, to the cans in which our beer is packaged. Because the packaging is often the first experience the customer has with our beer in market, we need to be certain that the quality of the cans matches the quality of the beverage inside. We are grateful to have partnered with CANPACK to help us ensure that this is indeed the case.
“The beverage can is an integral part of the whole consumer experience, telling the story of the brand and enhancing the anticipation of the drink it contains. These are the guiding principles of what we wanted to achieve when refreshing the branding of our core beers, without sacrificing the integrity of the original product. By utilizing CANPACK’s superb print quality and the expertise of Gamer Packaging, we were able to showcase every detail of the cans’ artistic decoration, whilst staying true to our brand ethos.”
The success of these designs has already been well-documented when the cans won “gold” at the International Beer Marketing Awards in 2022. These awards reward creativity and art in the beer industry.