The top performer when it comes to sustainability: Three facts you should know
Individual design
Consequently, the demand for animal urns is increasing, too. Models, which are not recognizable as urns at first glance, but are rather decorative objects or even pieces of art, are especially popular. This can be, for example, urns in animal form or in fancy forms such as spheres, pyramids or hearts, sometimes with custom name and date. While previously only animal urns made of ceramic or stainless steel were commercially available, a newcomer is now making a name for itself – the animal urn made of tinplate. This trend has been recognized and promoted by the Austrian company Pirlo, the first company to launch tinplate animal urns in Europe, in collaboration with thyssenkrupp Rasselstein. Being Germany’s only tinplate producer, the latter supplies rasselstein® High Formability packaging steel, which is used to produce the animal urn body and lid.
Why tinplate? For Volker Schöffel, Head of Product Development at Pirlo, its advantages are obvious: “Tinplate is of high quality, directly printable, sustainable and cost-efficient. A major advantage is the fast industrial production of up to 120 animal urns per minute“. The urn offered by Pirlo has a cylindrical shape, a rounded body and a screw-cap lid. “Only very few suppliers produce this type of tinplate screw-cap lid. We – together with Pirlo – are one of those suppliers“.
Tinplate: Excellent ductility for special geometries
The rounded body and the screw-on lid of the animal urns cannot be produced from standard tinplate. This is where thyssenkrupp Rasselstein, a premium supplier of packaging steel, came in. “We supply our rasselstein® High Formability Steel to our long-time customer Pirlo for its urns, as it possesses excellent ductility and deep drawing properties. These are the material properties, which make it possible to produce animal urns in the first place“, explains Jürgen Bracht, Head of Sales Germany and Austria at thyssenkrupp Rasselstein. “We have a long-standing trusting relationship with Pirlo, which is based on a spirit of partnership – we will jointly implement projects like this one, providing each other with active support“.
Pirlo is also satisfied with the collaboration, especially with the product quality and the customer service. “We have already implemented a lot of successful projects together with Rasselstein“, says Volker Schöffel. “When we received an inquiry for animal urns from Spain, we knew at once that Rasselstein is the right partner at our side to realize the project. The experts from Andernach provided friendly advice and assisted us with choosing the suitable packaging steel”.
Packaging steel – the high-quality alternative
After intensive development work during which materials were selected, special tools were developed by Pirlo and various designs were tested, the first market-ready samples are now available. Suppliers and customers benefit from the high-quality alternative to the existing urn models, which is characterized by the fact that it can be quickly produced and customized.
About thyssenkrupp Rasselstein and its product tinplate
thyssenkrupp Rasselstein is a leading global supplier of high-quality, precision-made packaging steel. The site in Andernach, Germany – the world’s biggest production site of its kind – produces 1.5 million tonnes of packaging steel each year. Our 2,400 employees serve around 400 customers from numerous markets in 80 countries – from producers of food and pet food cans to manufacturers of beverage and aerosol cans, containers for chemical products, and bottle caps. Expert service, sales and aftersales teams round out the product portfolio. They work closely with customers to maintain consistent high standards of quality and reliability worldwide.
