By Sally Wyatt/Reporter Correspondent Bob Lowe, Production Department Manager at Ball Metal in Fairfield, holds a painted and unpainted Pepsi can. The next stop on the production line for the painted can is a protective coating. (Ryan Chalk/The Reporter)
Fast facts
• Amcor PET in Fairfield makes more than 2 billion plastic bottles a year.
• Ball Metal Beverage Packaging in Fairfield makes more than 2.8 billion aluminum cans each year.
• Most wineries bottle their products in Saint-Gobain's glass bottles; its U.S. distribution center is in Fairfield.
• Rexam Beverage Can produces more than 50 billion cans each year for Europe, the United States and South America. It has 17 U.S. plants.
Next time you reach for a can of Pepsi, odds are very good that the aluminum can was made right here in Solano County. The same can be said for Gatorade, Hidden Valley Ranch, merlot and V-8 Juice, as four Fairfield businesses manufacture or distribute aluminum, plastic and glass containers for some of the world's best known food and beverage products.
"I can guarantee that Pepsi can is ours," said Jeff Prichard, plant manager for Ball Metal Beverage Packaging. The plant has been in operation for 30 years, and is set to celebrate the big anniversary in mid-September.
Prichard oversees a crew of 180 employees who work in shifts that run seven days a week, 24 hours a day. They produce about 2.8 billion aluminum cans a year, and Pepsi is the company's biggest customer. It also provides aluminum cans for Coke, Shasta, Safeway, Sierra Mist, Sprite, Dr. Pepper and "little, off-the-wall brands."
From start to finish, it takes about an hour to create an aluminum can, Prichard said.
The process begins with a 7-foot-wide, 25,000-pound "coil" of aluminum that, when unrolled, would actually stretch out about 4.5 miles in length. That coil will ultimately produce about 700,000 cans, he said.
As the coil starts its journey toward becoming aluminum cans, it will go through several different processes. First, the metal is "formed into a cup that looks like a tuna can," Prichard explained.
From there it is "drawn out and ironed" until it has been shaped into a 12-ounce can. Further down the line, it is trimmed, "necked" and then decorated.
"We have three different production lines," Prichard said, "and each is capable of putting on a different label at any time. In fact, we have one line where we can put on six different labels in one day. We can change colors and print just as you could at a newspaper."
The Fairfield facility also makes "can ends," but they are not placed on the aluminum cans at the plant; instead, customers fill the cans and put the ends on at their facilities.
The most amazing part of the process is the speed at which it all happens. Millions of cans are moving about at high speed, and the sight is "pretty overwhelming," Prichard noted.
Ball Metal isn't the only manufacturing facility to produce aluminum cans in Solano County. Rexam Beverage Can in Fairfield also makes aluminum cans, and by the billions, for customers including Anheuser-Busch and Coca-Cola.
"We make 4.1 million cans every 24 hours, or approximately 1.5 billion cans per year," said Christine Briceno, Human Resources manager for the Fairfield facility. That equates to 2,847 aluminum cans per minute.
To maintain that level of production, 95 employees work 12-hour shifts, day-in and day-out.
"We are a 24/7 facility," Briceno said.
Billions and billions of plastic bottles are created in Fairfield, too, at the Amcor PET Packaging facility.
The company - a division of Melbourne, Australia-based Amcor - is headquartered in Ann Arbor, Mich., and has 50 manufacturing facilities worldwide that produce a variety of containers for a wide range of industries.
Every year its Fairfield facility - one of three in California - manufactures more than 2 billion plastic bottles for popular products such as Gatorade, Powerade, V-8 Juice, liquors, and Hidden Valley Ranch salad dressing, according to Anita Difalco, spokesperson for the Fairfield manufacturing facility. The company's biggest customers are Coke and Pepsi.
Amcor PET's 148 employees work around the clock and its machines work at lightning speed in order to meet the demand for PET (polyethylene terephthalate) plastic bottles.
"We make thousands of bottles per minute," Difalco said. "Our fastest machine makes 28,000 an hour."
Glass wine bottles for chardonnay or merlot also spend some time in Solano County, according to Gina Behrman, marketing research and communications coordinator for Saint-Gobain Containers.
Saint-Gobain, which is headquartered in Muncie, Ind., produces glass containers in a variety of sizes and colors at its Madera and Seattle manufacturing facilities, which are then shipped to its Fairfield distribution center, the only distribution center the company has in the United States.
"These glass bottles are then distributed to wine producers throughout the U.S., as we are the primary supplier to the U.S. wine industry," Behrman explained.
To meet the demand, the distribution facility employs about 80 people, who work in shifts that last 24 hours a day, five days a week. St. Gobain is currently constructing a new facility at the intersection of Peabody Road and Air Base Parkway that is more than 1 million square feet.
A section of the production line at Ball Metal.
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