With sales tonnages of food cans having largely stabilised over the past couple of years, the sector organisation is predicting that new easy-open options will protect the can's position still further, or even bring growth.

Throughout the 1990s, food cans lost ground to plastics and other materials, with a shift from ambient long-life products to fresh and chilled alternatives. Since Canned Food UK was set up in 2000, linking materials suppliers, canmakers and brands, the organisation has run campaigns targetting consumer attitudes. Key emphases are nutrition and convenience.

Chairman Steve Thomas says: "It's a long-term project. Clearly, these shifts are not going to happen overnight, especially when you're dealing with often entrenched opinions."

Despite the on-cost, the vital feature for convenience is the easy-open end. With peelable foil membrane ends increasingly becoming available, Thomas believes this will in future reinforce, or even help to expand, the can's market share in food. "I think the market has to continue along the route of making the pack more desirable and more functional, and there are further exciting closure systems in the pipeline," he notes.

This combination of consumer campaigns and design innovation has already bolstered the French canned food sector, says Thomas. "And now, after years of continual decline in tonnage terms, the UK market seems to have stabilised, too, and in value terms it is growing," he adds.