The tin container has been a mainstay of the food industry when it comes to storing and preserving food for sale. The advent of plastics and other new materials for keeping food safe have not been successful in dislodging tin as one of the top choices when it comes to storing food.
Tin is a metal that is mined mostly in the South East Asian region and parts of South America. Tin mines normally look like a gigantic hole in the ground with a huge tin miner digging are the center. The raw tin has to be smelted and purified before it can be used. Smelting involves indirectly heating the tin to extreme temperatures to remove the impurities.
Ever since it was discovered that sealing food in an airtight container will preserve its freshness, the food industry has been looking at many options of implementing the discovery economically. The first attempts were with sealed glass bottles. Although the glass bottles worked very well, they do come with limitations. Glass was getting expensive to manufacture and they break quite easily. These limitations were holding the food business.
When the tin can was invented, the food industry made huge steps in mass-producing preserved food for the masses. Tin cans were fairly easy to manufacture and were cheap too. This would increase the profit margin and suddenly, selling huge amounts of preserved food was good for business. The tin cans were capable of withstanding much more abuse than glass bottles so this made them very easy to ship to anywhere in the world. Furthermore, the size and shape of the tin containers are only limited to the production capability of individual factories.
Due to the high degree of flexibility in manufacturing tin containers, businesses are not just limited to producing tin cans. The tin containers started to emerge in various shapes and sizes to cater to business needs and branding opportunities. Nowadays, we still see the tin can on store shelves. Not only that, we also have tin cookie containers, heart shaped tin chocolate containers and occasionally an exotic shaped tin container for special events.
Moreen Torpy is the De-Clutter Coach, a Trained Professional Organizer, Author, and Speaker. Let's Get Organized: 172 tiplets to simplify life is her first published work. See http://www.decluttercoach.ca to subscribe to Let's Get Organized, her monthly e-zine and purchase the booklet.