Heekin Can

Heekin Can, Inc. is a division of the Ball Corporation. It began as an independent company that grew to be one of the largest metal can manufacturers in the United States.

Heekin Can was founded in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1901 by James Heekin (born December 8, 1843), proprietor of a business that sold food products, including coffee, tea, spices, extracts, and baking powder, packaged in tin cans. After his can supplier increased prices in 1900, Heekin began to make his own cans. The can-manufacturing operation soon evolved into the Heekin Can Company, which not only supplied the Heekin Spice Company, but also made cans for other businesses.

James Heekin died in 1904, and one of his 15 children, James J. Heekin, took over the business. Under his leadership the company began using lithography to add labeling and decoration to cans, and in the early 1900s it introduced the open-top cylinder can. Known as the "sanitary" or "packers" can, this new design was soon adopted as an industry standard. In 1915 a second manufacturing facility was added, due in part to increasing demand from customer R.J. Reynolds Company. The new plant was described at one time as the United States' "largest metal lithographing plant under one roof."

Heekin Can remained under family ownership and management until 1965. James J. Heekin retired in 1928, succeeded as company president by his brother Albert. Albert Heekin headed the business until 1948, when another brother, Daniel M. Heekin, assumed the presidency. Daniel, who had been president of the Can Manufacturers Institute during World War II, when manufacturers of consumer products faced widespread shortages of raw materials, oversaw a major expansion in the late 1940s and early 1950s, as Heekin added four new plants in Arkansas and Tennessee. Daniel Heekin was succeeded in 1954 by his nephew, Albert Heekin Jr., who was to be the last family member to serve as head of the company.

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