There’s also a business incentive for skinny designs.
Brands can squeeze more 12 oz. skinny cans on store shelves, warehouse pallets and trucks than wider cans, said Dave Fedewa, a partner at McKinsey who consults for retail and consumer packaged goods companies. That means higher sales and cost savings.
But the key, Fedewa said, is that skinny cans catch the eye: “It’s funny how much growth that can drive in retail.”
“We have moved to a sleek can and a completely new visual identity, with the aim to delight consumers by offering a more premium and more sustainable drinking experience,” the brand replied on Twitter.
The new shape is meant to visually communicate that the drink inside, which has been reformulated to eliminate artificial colors and sweeteners, is healthier than the typical fizzy beverage, said Thomas Conquet, marketing director of Sanpellegrino in the U.S.
“Consumers feel it’s a bit more elegant, a bit more upscale, a bit more adult when they have this can in their hands,” he said, citing testing conducted by the brand.
This was a nice addition. Regarding the surface vs volume optimisation I remember it was a high school mathematics problem but after review it this proportion is a height twice the radius of the cilinder, the standard/classic proportion deviates to a ~2.2 value considering many other factors like manufacturing limitations, etc. In any case the classic is closer to reduce the waste, etc than the slender one, the standard has like a 1.5% larger surface than the ideal, but the slim goes up to a ~10%
It’s not just about surface area, though, but also material thickness. The bottom and top are thicker and therefore use more material.
The first thing I tried to find was the weight of the empty cans to see which actually used more material, but I didn’t get very far. I probably could’ve tried harder, but I considered I wanted to find out the real reason so I started looking for other kinds of articles.
Neither of the two articles I linked mention anything about the material cost, only about being able to pack the tall cans tighter during shipping and on shelves. So I figured material cost wasn’t particularly relevant/negligible as to why companies made the switch.
Okay, did some actual reading:
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/03/30/business/soda-cans-slim-aluminum/
https://www.wsj.com/articles/slim-beverage-cans-gain-ground-against-their-squatter-cousins-11657136431
That last quote… yuck.
This was a nice addition. Regarding the surface vs volume optimisation I remember it was a high school mathematics problem but after review it this proportion is a height twice the radius of the cilinder, the standard/classic proportion deviates to a ~2.2 value considering many other factors like manufacturing limitations, etc. In any case the classic is closer to reduce the waste, etc than the slender one, the standard has like a 1.5% larger surface than the ideal, but the slim goes up to a ~10%
It’s not just about surface area, though, but also material thickness. The bottom and top are thicker and therefore use more material.
The first thing I tried to find was the weight of the empty cans to see which actually used more material, but I didn’t get very far. I probably could’ve tried harder, but I considered I wanted to find out the real reason so I started looking for other kinds of articles.
Neither of the two articles I linked mention anything about the material cost, only about being able to pack the tall cans tighter during shipping and on shelves. So I figured material cost wasn’t particularly relevant/negligible as to why companies made the switch.