Corona Creates Uniquely Stackable Beer Cans To Kill Plastic Ring Packaging

By Mikelle Leow, 24 Jun 2019

Video screenshot via Leo Burnett México

Corona’s beer cans will fill not the tummies of sea animals, but just yours. The Mexican pale lager brand has redesigned its packaging to make six-pack plastic rings obsolete, and has even made its revamp available for other beer producers to replicate.

Previously, the company developed plastic-free rings to protect the world’s seas from being polluted with the material. Its new stackable packaging, ‘Fit Packs’, requires no additional material and is relatively affordable to produce.

As the beverage industry creates 17 million tons of plastic—solely in terms of packaging—each year, Corona approached advertising firm Leo Burnett Mexico to eliminate the harmful material from its wrappers. The new packaging had to also be “feasible, scalable” and easy to executive in various markets.

“The challenge is simple to explain,” Leo Burnett shares in a blog post. “Find a solution considering nothing else but the can. And so ‘Fit Packs’ was born.”

The agency developed a stackable system that allows up to 10 beer cans to be locked together, negating the need to use additional packaging material like plastic or cardboard. The idea isn’t a tall order—the threading detail that goes on the top and bottom of each unit can be scaled globally.

The need to save the planet overpowers Corona’s desire to stand out from the competition, as the company has even made the design open source for rivals in the beverage industry to follow suit.

The stackable can designs are such a breakthrough, they earned themselves a spot on Cannes Innovation Lions’ shortlist this year.