Affordable, Sustainable, and Fast: Distributing for PakTech

As one of the largest handle distributors in the world, there were a few things that were appealing to American Canning about working with PakTech.
American Canning — a mobile canning, handle and can distributor — began working with PakTech about seven years ago because of the quality of the product itself. Instead of the traditional plastic rings that can hurt wildlife, PakTech offered post-consumer recycled rings that cover the full lids without needing as much machinery to apply. Aside from being environmentally friendly, PakTech offers a wide variety of colors that American Canning keeps constantly in stock.
Having stocked products means American Canning can ship packages within days rather than taking weeks to manufacture products. Based out of Austin, Texas, American Canning delivers all across the state, nation and throughout six different countries. Being centrally located helps cut shipping times in half.
“Craft beer is a higher quality. It uses a lot more sets of ingredients, a lot more effort and blood sweat and tears go into making it,” said David Racino, co-founder and CEO of American Canning. “So I think it helps elevate the packaging and communicates that to the consumer better than what had been previously used on cans in the past.”
The 31 standard colors let breweries pick colors that match their brand and packaging.
“Differentiation of your product is possibly more important than ever to consumers,” Racino said.
Racino said one thing he likes about working with PakTech is its ability to keep up with demand and predict the market. With hard seltzers the new hot thing, PakTech is mass-producing and tweaking the design for its sleek can handles as breweries begin to package their hard seltzers in the thinner cans.
“PakTech is actually really good about listening to the market, seeing what’s happening and what people need and so they’re always improving,” Racino said. They’ve done a really good job of improving and modifying their designs.”
When customers complained about cans being too hard to get out of the recycled plastic handles, PakTech modified its design several years ago making them easy-release. Now the “sleek” can handles (for cans like hard seltzers) have been redesigned and PakTech is releasing a bigger selection with the new handles.
While PakTech deals with a lot of bigger retailers and distributors, it directs smaller breweries to its distributors for faster turnover times. Racino said American Canning works with more than 1,500 breweries. Rather than selling full pallets at a time, American Canning can distribute smaller quantities for specific handles such as crowlers.
“Somebody is not going to buy a pallet of crowlers three-pack handles. That would take a brewery a decade to go through,” Racino said.
The cans and applicators are so easy to use customer service calls are minimal. Even with a team of full-time customer service staff, “we don’t really get a lot of complaints or have a lot of issues with what the gang handles anymore,” Racino said. “I think there was a little confusion when everyone was transitioning from the old original style to the easy-release style but most of that was just users not knowing the difference, and now we’ve really made that transition and most people around the country have made it.”
When a brewer does have an issue, American Canning can get back to them normally within the day.

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