Pick up a Coca-Cola, a Red Bull or a beer from Anheuser-Busch InBev, the brewer behind Budweiser and Stella Artois, and there is a fair chance that Ball made the can. The name never appears on the label.
Even so, Ball is one of the world's leading makers of aluminum cans, and its customers sell some of the best-known drinks on both sides of the Atlantic. Each time a drink goes into a can rather than a plastic bottle, Ball has a little more work to do.
Lately it has had a great deal more. Ball's sales are climbing quickly, helped by new plants in Europe and, it seems, by the price of aluminum, which its contracts mostly pass on to customers. The bigger sales are easy to see; what Ball keeps from them is harder to judge. Is this growth turning into lasting profit and cash?
