OPERATIONS
“ There are going to be an amazing amount of celebrations throughout the summer”
Ron Lewis CEO Ball Corporation
CUSTOM CANNING
Both in supermarkets and stadiums, many fans’ drinks of choice will be supplied in cans. Ball Corporation, the world’ s largest producer of beverage cans, expects the championship to support demand for its packaging.
In its 2025 Q4 earnings call, CEO Ron Lewis said:“ We’ re really excited about the World Cup. There are going to be an amazing amount of celebrations throughout the summer … I bet it will be slightly positive for all of us that sell beverages.”
In 2022, it launched Ball Digital Printing, a technology that allows for photographic-quality, custom and unique labels to be printed on cans at scale. This technology was used for the last World Cup to produce special labels in support of Brazil for a beer brand.
CREDIT: BALL CORPORATION
Every pallet and, in some cases, individual sponsor products, act as smart nodes that signal their location, temperature and status in real time.
In a normal supply chain, just-intime manufacturing is often preferred to keep warehouse costs low. For this tournament, manufacturers are intentionally overproducing and building massive buffer inventories. Planners are using advanced simulation tools like digital twins to predict demand spikes. If an underdog team suddenly advances, demand for products could spike overnight in a specific host city.
US food and beverage companies are heavily leveraging Mexico due to the USMCA trade agreement for regionalised supply chains. Domestically, brands are also leaning on local or regional co-packing facilities to process and package food closer to the end consumer. Brands are also redesigning formulas to use local ingredients and rethinking packaging to reduce reliance on international intermediates.
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