The History of Ball
Since its founding, Ball has grown from a small producer of wooden-jacketed tin cans to an international manufacturing company with a cutting-edge aerospace business. Ball is recognized around the world for its high-quality metal and PET plastic food and beverage containers, and for its leading aerospace technology products and services.
The five founding Ball brothers started the company in 1880 in Buffalo, New York. Two of the brothers, Frank and Edmund, borrowed $200 from their Uncle George, a minister, to go into business selling wood-jacketed tin containers to hold paint, varnishes and kerosene. They named their business the Wooden Jacket Can Company. Their product was so successful they expanded their line. Soon, the brothers had refined their original product to tin-jacketed, glass-lined containers.
In 1884, the renamed Ball Brothers Glass Manufacturing Company began manufacturing yet another new product - the home canning jar, which would one day make Ball a household name. Our company is still probably best known by the public for its home canning jars, which we no longer make. In 1887, the five Ball brothers - Edmund, Frank, George, Lucius and William - moved their business to Muncie, Indiana, to take advantage of a natural gas boom in the Midwest. Great quantities of natural gas were necessary to make glass. Ball acquired the first of several small glass companies in 1898, and printed the first Ball Blue Book - featuring home canning recipes and techniques - in 1909.
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Ball Timeline
2006
Ball acquired U.S. Can, a U.S.-based aerosol and specialty metal packaging company, and merged it with Ball’s metal food packaging operations to form the metal food and household products packaging division. Ball also acquired certain North American plastic bottle container assets of Alcan Packaging and combined it with Ball's existing plastic packaging operations.
2002
Ball acquired Schmalbach-Lubeca AG, the German-based metal beverage company, and created Ball Packaging Europe, boosting Ball’s beverage can sales by more than $1 billion.
1998
Ball acquired the metal beverage container assets of Reynolds Metals Company, making Ball the largest supplier of metal beverage cans in North America, and one of the largest in the world.
1997
Ball acquired M.C. Packaging Ltd. in China. MCP, combined with Ball’s FTB Packaging Ltd. joint venture in China, makes Ball the largest supplier of cans in that nation.
1996
Ball-Foster Glass Container Co. was created as a joint venture glass company with Group Saint Gobain, in September 1995. Ball sold its remaining interest in Ball-Foster to Group Saint Gobain in 1996 and exited the glass business.
1995
Ball’s aerospace business was converted to a wholly owned subsidiary, Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. of Broomfield, Colorado.
1994
Ball established plastic container operations with office in Smyrna, Ga.; built first PET manufacturing plant in Chino, Calif., in 1995.
1993
Ball acquired Heekin Can, Inc. Heekin was the largest regional manufacturer of metal food containers in the U.S. prior to the acquisition. Combined with Ball Packaging Products Canada, Inc.’s six plants, the eleven former Heekin plants made Ball the third largest producer of metal food and aerosol cans in the North American market.
1969
Ball acquired the Jeffco Manufacturing Company in Denver and formed metal beverage container operations.
1956
Ball formed the Ball Brothers Research Corporation. Known today as Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. the corporation produces space systems engineering products; telecommunications technology; and electro-optics and cryogenics materials for government and commercial customers.