Crown Holdings, Inc.

What does Crown Holdings make?
Aluminum beverage cans and ends, food cans, aerosol containers, metal closures, and transit packaging, produced in roughly 200 plants across about 40 countries.

Is Crown Holdings publicly traded?
Yes. It trades on the NYSE under ticker CCK.

Is Crown the same company as Ball Corporation?
No. Crown and Ball are the two largest competitors in the global beverage can market; they are separate companies.

Who founded Crown?
William Painter, who invented the crown cork bottle cap in 1892 and founded Crown Cork & Seal in Baltimore.

Where is Crown headquartered?
Tampa, Florida, USA, having moved from the Philadelphia area.

William Painter, a Baltimore inventor, patented the crown cork bottle cap in 1892, the crimped cap that sealed glass bottles reliably and cheaply. He founded Crown Cork & Seal to manufacture the caps and the machines that applied them, and the company became a dominant closure supplier to American brewers and bottlers through the early 20th century.

Crown moved into can manufacturing mid-century, weathering a near-collapse in the 1950s and 1960s when diversification overreached. A turnaround under John Connelly refocused the company on metal packaging through the 1970s and 1980s. The 1996 acquisition of CarnaudMetalbox, the French packaging giant formed from Carnaud and Metal Box, roughly doubled Crown's size and made it a truly global producer. It became Crown Holdings, Inc. in the 2000s and relocated headquarters from Philadelphia to Tampa.

The modern era added significant capacity in beverage cans as aluminum displaced plastic and glass on sustainability grounds, plus acquisitions in aerosols and transit packaging. CEO Timothy Donahue, who joined the company in 1990, has led since 2016.

Aluminum cans are the most recycled beverage container in the world, which places Crown on the favorable side of packaging sustainability debates. The company reports recycling rate improvement targets and energy reduction programs across its plant network.

Its exposure is industrial: plant emissions, worker safety across 200 factories, and the cyclicality of metals markets.