`Japanese steel soda cans`

Policy-protected industrial choice — Japanese government protected domestic steel by keeping vending-machine soda in steel cans rather than aluminum, since Japan has no indigenous aluminum industry. Aluminum has now displaced steel as the protection eased. Used as the lecture-opening illustration of how non-technical factors drive materials selection.

In Japan — anybody ever lived in Japan for a while, visited Japan? If you go to the vending machine and you get a soda, is that an aluminum can? Nowadays it depends. When I lived there thirty years ago it was always steel, and it was a political thing. Japan doesn't have an indigenous aluminum industry, but their government wanted to protect their steel industry and give them a bigger market. So the Japanese used steel — not because it was cheaper, not because it was better, but because the government was trying to give a market to the steel companies. Not that the steel companies really needed it in 1985, but they still had it. I haven't been back to Japan for ten years now, but I understand they are using more aluminum cans now, because they don't need to protect their steel industry anymore. It gets down to economics.