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An Eco-Friendly Alternative to Plastic Six-Pack Rings

KeelClip’s paperboard technology delivers sustainability, branding, and functionality benefits that may convince brands to ditch single-use plastic six-pack rings for good.

Anheuser-Busch InBev, one of the largest brewers in the world, will use KeelClip in its U.K. market this spring for some of its brands, including Bud Light. Photo courtesy of Graphic Packaging International.
Anheuser-Busch InBev, one of the largest brewers in the world, will use KeelClip in its U.K. market this spring for some of its brands, including Bud Light. Photo courtesy of Graphic Packaging International.

Those ubiquitous plastic six-pack rings for aluminum cans may become a thing of the past if Graphic Packaging International has its way. The Atlanta-based paperboard and paper-based packaging company created KeelClip, an environmentally responsible paperboard alternative that also offers functionality and branding benefits over conventional polymer multipack can carriers.

Graphic Packaging International designed KeelClip to replace plastic rings, tops, and shrink wrap packaging used for packs of beers and sodas. The paperboard fastener features a lid that covers the top of the cans. A flap attached underneath the center of the lid slips in between the rows of cans. That flap is shaped like the keel of a ship to provide stability for the pack. Thanks to the keel, the packaging’s format can accommodate a variety of can heights and diameters, as well as configurations ranging from 2x2 to the standard 2x6 to as many as 2x10.

Timing is everything

Graphic Packaging International spent several years developing KeelClip, but it decided to launch the eco-friendly packaging last fall given current consumer sentiment condemning plastic. Over the last few years, consumers have been inundated with haunting images of plastic pollution in oceans, and turtles, seagulls, and other marine life ensnared and killed by plastic rings. In addition, more countries have passed legislation banning single-use plastic.


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