Businessweek

Ball Corporation supplies metal packaging to the beverage, food, personal care, and household products industries. The company’s packaging products are produced for various end uses and are manufactured in facilities worldwide. It also provides aerospace and other technologies and services to governmental and commercial customers within its aerospace and technologies segment. The company’s major product lines include aluminum and steel beverage containers. It also produces steel food containers, and steel and aluminum containers, as well as steel paint cans, decorative steel tins, and aluminum slugs. It sells a majority of its packaging products to relatively few major companies in North America, Europe, the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Brazil, Mexico, and Argentina, as do its equity joint ventures in the United States of America (U.S.) and Vietnam. Segments The company operates through four segments: Metal Beverage Packaging, Americas and Asia; Metal Beverage Packaging, Europe; Metal Food and Household Products Packaging, Americas; and Aerospace and Technologies. Metal Beverage Packaging, Americas and Asia This segment offers metal beverage containers that are primarily sold to fillers of carbonated soft drinks, beer, energy drinks, and other beverages. Americas Metal beverage containers and ends are produced at 17 manufacturing facilities in the U.S., 1 in Canada, and 4 in Brazil. Ends are produced within four of the U.S. facilities, including two facilities that manufacture ends, and one facility in Brazil. Additionally, Rocky Mountain Metal Container, LLC, a 50-percent investment owned by the company and MillerCoors LLC, operate metal beverage container and end manufacturing facilities in Golden, Colorado. The company owns 60.1 percent economic interest in its Brazilian metal beverage packaging joint venture, Latapack-Ball Embalagens Ltda., through a transaction with the joint venture partner, Latapack S.A. Asia The company manufactures metal beverage containers in the PRC. Its operations include the manufacture of aluminum containers and ends in five facilities in the PRC. The company also manufactures and sells high-density plastic containers in two PRC facilities primarily servicing the motor oil industry. The company owns its partners’ 60 percent interest in Qingdao M.C. Packaging Ltd., a joint venture metal beverage container facility in Qingdao, PRC. It has a joint venture agreement with Thai Beverage Can Limited to construct a beverage container manufacturing facility in Vietnam. The company also owns Guangdong Jianlibao Group Co., Ltd’s 65 percent interest in a joint venture metal beverage container and end facility in Sanshui (Foshan), PRC. The company owns 35 percent of the joint venture facility. Metal Beverage Packaging, Europe This segment supplies two-piece metal beverage containers and ends for producers of carbonated soft drinks, beer, energy drinks, and other beverages, as well as extruded aluminum aerosol containers and aluminum slugs. The European operations consist of 16 facilities — 10 beverage container facilities, 3 extruded aluminum aerosol facilities, 2 beverage end facilities, and 1 aluminum slug facility — of which 4 are located in Germany, 4 in the United Kingdom, 4 in France, and 1 each in the Netherlands, Poland, Serbia, and the Czech Republic. During 2012, the company acquired Tubettificio Europeo S.p.A., a small regional manufacturer of metal beverage packaging containers in Italy and consolidated it into other existing facilities. It owns Aerocan S.A.S., an European supplier of extruded aluminum aerosol containers. Metal Food and Household Products Packaging, Americas This segment produces two-piece and three-piece steel food containers and ends for packaging vegetables, fruit, soups, meat, seafood, nutritional products, pet food, and other products. This segment also manufactures and sells aerosol, paint, and general line containers, as well as decorative specialty containers, extruded aluminum aerosol containers, and aluminum slugs. There are a total of 14 facilities in the U.S., 1 in Canada, and 1 in Mexico, which produce these pr