"Marie Dodge" > wrote in message
...
>
> "Anny Middon" > wrote in message
> ...
>> "Melba's Jammin'" > wrote in message
>> ...
>>> Is anyone else running into a lot of crap Kerr jars and lids? By a lot,
>>> I mean one or more. :-0)
>>>
>>> I have had at least five lid failures this year -- maybe my own doing
>>> but I don't see how.
>>>
>>> I'm going to call Kerr and complain. Stay tuned.
>>>
>>
>> I haven't used any Kerr lids this year -- I bought several boxes of Ball
>> ones on sale at Wal-mart last year and are still using them up. I need
>> more, so am glad for the heads-up -- I'll be sure not to buy Kerr ones.
>
> Both Kerr and Ball and I believe Golden Harvest are all owned by Jardin
> (sp?) now. That Co. makes them all so one will be as good or as bad as the
> other.
>

Historically the Ball lid made by Jardin used white paint on the inside of
the lid to prevent the food contents from rusting the lid, and the Kerr
lids made by Jardin use clear polyurethane to perform the same function,
ie: the inside of the Kerr lid is golden in color.

As far as I can tell this is done for purely historical marketing reasons
because some people feel that the coating on one lid is better than the
other and Jardin knows better than to bother a sleeping dog.

But it -is- pretty clear to me that over the years Jardin's accountants
have been nickel-and-diming the sealing material to save money, making
it thinner and the strip itself narrower. They shaved probably a few
mils off the thickness and the strip is a couple mm narrower. I would guess
the savings add up to .000000001 cents per lid. :-/ They also used to
stamp impress the Kerr and Ball name on the lid and now they just
print them, I guess that saved another .000000001 cents per lid. And
they also redesigned the graphic on the Ball lid to make it less pretty and
more boring looking, thus making the printing simpler, saving another
..0000001 cents per lid.

No doubt some executive got a million dollar bonus over those ones.

What I can't figure out for the life of me is why in blazes that Jardin
has a lock on this market. There are hundreds of glass jar manufacturers
out there who make commercial glass jars and commercial lids that spin
on with the industry standard 1/4 and 1/2 turn, all competing with each
other.
And you can take the lid off a commercially canned pickle jar and see
how much thicker the steel is in it and how much higher quality the
sealing strip is.

It would seem to me that the time is ripe for one of the commercial
jar manufacturers to package their product for retail sale and make
their one piece lids available for retail sale for home canning, and give
Jardin a run for their money. Certainly at the volumes they produce
they could easily undercut Jardin and still make a profit.

I wonder if this is all a plot at Jarden to get us to move to those
super expensive "Ball Collection Elite Platinum" lids that are just
plain steel with a poly coat, no color anodization. It's the old story
of introduce a cheaper replacement product, label it with a more
expensive-sounding name, then make the existing product cruddier
and cruddier over the following years so that it becomes unusable and
you have to go to the more expensive product that gives you less.

Ted