John Miller received a call the week before Thanksgiving in 2020. Leaders from two sustainable food companies had a problem. In the midst of the COVID pandemic, jars and lids for home canning were in short supply, they said.
Mark Coblentz of Walnut Creek Foods and Galen Lehman at Lehman’s Hardware are located in Ohio’s Amish Country, where entrepreneurial spirit is a way of life. Miller’s company, SUPERB Industries, is based there, too.
“Can you help?” Coblentz and Lehman asked. “If something is not done, we will lose the harvest next year.”
SUPERB Industries manufactures over one billion engineered components for the automotive and electronics industries. They were capable of producing canning lids, so they embarked on a mission to fulfill the request.
SUPERB officials contacted members of the Amish community and asked for a sampling of the leading brand lids over the last 30 years.
They evaluated them in their lab and then applied automotive engineering disciplines.
“It quickly became apparent that no one had thought about home canning product enhancement in a meaningful way for 50 years,” said Miller, who is president of SUPERB, “We deployed a team of product, process, and automation engineers and delivered five million lids in time for the 2021 harvest.
“Before we shipped the first product we had over 400 Amish canners test the product,” Miller added. “The market needed innovation and a sustainable supply.”
After creating the lids and bands, SUPERB set out to locate a glass supplier.
“When we started testing jars from U.S. manufacturers, all but one failed our quality and product standards,” Miller explained.
Eventually, SUPERB found an ideal match in Arglass.
“Our mission has always been to produce the highest quality glass containers while pushing the boundaries of innovation in manufacturing,” said José de Diego Arozamena, CEO at Arglass. “By teaming up with Superb, we are creating a fully American-made canning solution that guarantees quality and performance for home canners.”
By combining Arglass’ expertise in producing high-quality glass jars with Superb’s patented lids and bands, the partnership provides a durable, reliable, and premium canning experience for home canners under then brand name Superb Arglass.
The Superb Arglass home canning line will debut in May 2025, available through select retailers and online platforms.
Arglass is the first and only plant in the world to offer a traceability system for all of products throughout the entire supply chain. SUPERB Arglass bottles and jars are individually identified within its proprietary Bottle DNA™ system.
The system gives the company and customers the ability to trace any individual container and tie it to all of its production parameters.
Bottle DNA™ serves to guarantee quality, provide traceability and make future production more consistent and efficient. Arglass’ Bottle DNA™ can also be used by clients to trace their products once they’ve been distributed in the market.
For more information about this exciting new line, visit www.superbcanning.com.
About Arglass
Arglass is an American firm that was born to disrupt the traditional glass industry. We’ve brought new thinking to every corner of our business.
Our overhaul of the traditional glass production model culminated in our brand-new production facility, which was launched in December 2020.
Based in Georgia, our facility is the most modern and technologically advanced plant in America, with a production system based on flexibility, efficiency, and sustainability.
Our company takes a customer-first and values-centric approach to business. We thoroughly understand the needs of the local markets and offer our clients agile and personalized processes that are unlike anything else in the industry.
About Superb Sealing Solutions
Since the late 1700s, the Miller family has cultivated a tradition of superb workmanship as farmers, blacksmiths, and clockmakers. And now, we make precision metal parts for companies around the world.
So when our community called on us to create a better canning lid, we put eight generations of knowledge to work.
In 2021, supply chain disruptions resulted in our local Amish population facing a shortage of high-quality lids.
With our own roots in the Amish tradition, we were committed to helping our neighbors preserve their harvest and keep their shelves stocked with food. We put our engineering minds to work and designed a lid with a more reliable seal, better quality assurance, and improved corrosion resistance.
