Crown Holdings, Inc. has announced collaboration with Velox Ltd. to provide beverage brands with game-changing digital decoration technology for both straight wall and necked aluminum cans. Crown and Velox brought together their expertise to unlock new possibilities for major brands wishing to increase product offerings, as well as smaller producers taking advantage of the benefits of fully recyclable beverage cans. The technology and solution deliver market firsts and create greater brand design options with running speeds over five times faster than existing digital solutions and proprietary features, including the ability to print up to 14 simultaneous colors and embellishments such as gloss, matte and embossing on nearly the entire surface area of the can. Crown and Velox recognize a growing global demand from beverage brands for more innovative digital decoration solutions. Brands can now take advantage of the technology and solutions' myriad benefits, particularly execution of lower production volumes that do not meet the constraints of traditional printing, such as small-batch varieties, short-run seasonal and promotional products or multipacks containing a variety of SKUs. The Velox technology and solutions also provide a photorealistic quality and wider color gamut for graphics, the ability to quickly produce an accurate print proof of a package and, in the case of smaller brands, improved sustainability over traditional plastic shrink wrap and labels that significantly hinder the aluminum can recycling process. Unique to the technology and solution is a running speed of up to 500 cans per minute, a rate significantly higher than previous limits of 90 cans per minute for comparable-quality digitally printed beverage cans. The innovative technology also prints effectively onto the can surface with or without a white basecoat, streamlining production and allowing the use of translucent inks and/or the metal substrate to shine through graphics when desired. Additionally, it enables printing of images – for the first time – on both the can neck and chime, increasing branding real estate and consumer appeal. Leveraging deep multidisciplinary technical capabilities and strong digital printing expertise of the R&D hub of Velox's Israel headquarters, with Crown's global command of graphic design, metal forming technology, can manufacturing processes and longstanding history in metal packaging innovation, the development for the digital printing machine is already complete. Commercial can production utilizing the technology is anticipated within 2022, following ongoing pilot testing in Crown's global R&D Centre in Wantage, UK.