CanSealing Systems has been named Best of Category in Digital Printing at the International Metal Decorating & Packaging Association’s (IMDPA) 2026 Excellence in Quality competition.

The award was presented at the IMDPA annual conference. It recognised the Littleton, Colorado company’s work on the ‘Summer Vibes’ aluminium bottle. Judges scored the entry highly for decorating parts of a fully formed aluminium container that digital printing has historically struggled to reach.

CanSealing says it is the first aluminium bottle to be digitally printed continuously from the bottom shoulder up through the neck taper without distortion. The decoration also includes raised 3D relief graphics printed directly onto the metal. According to the company, this removes the need for mechanical embossing tooling or a secondary stamping step. The process is patent pending.

Vincent Stempfer, managing partner at CanSealing Systems, said: “Legacy digital printing on fully formed metal containers has been severely constrained by existing equipment suppliers, restricting the graphic canvas to straight-walled cylindrical areas, with some attempts at printing over neck diameter variations of just a few millimetres resulting in a loss of precision.

“The ‘Summer Vibes’ bottle demonstrates that brands no longer need to compromise. Achieving full bottom-shoulder-to-neck coverage alongside digitally printed 3D relief graphics proves what advanced Koenig & Bauer Kammann digital printing capabilities can deliver at scale.”

The company also highlights consistent colour matching and smooth gradients across the bottle’s changing curvature and tapered diameters. It says this comes from close control of droplet size, deposition and placement.

CanSealing’s wider business focuses on putting pre-consumer metal packaging back into use instead of remelting it. Its systems turn production scrap, graphic overruns and obsolete stock into what it calls ‘Better Brites’. These are then redecorated on Koenig & Bauer Kammann digital printers under its ‘Next-Gen Can’ banner. The company says the approach frees up line capacity, avoids write-offs and reduces Scope 3 emissions compared with remelting.