Cold can hopes run hot

SEOUL - South Korean inventor Suh Won-gil hopes that thirsty soccer World Cup fans will help push his self-cooling drink cans on to the world stage.

Suh is talking to South Korea's top drinks maker and a steel firm about commercialising his Icetec cans, which cool their contents seconds after being opened.

"I am sure my self-cooling cans will revolutionise the whole beverage industry," Suh, 39, said at his small office in northeastern Seoul.

The contents cooled to near freezing from 30C within 15s of the ringpull triggering the cooling device inside.

Attempts since the mid-1990s to bring self-cooling cans to the market have foundered on high production costs and the inability to chill contents fast enough.

His device, estimated to cost 8USc (18.3c) a can when mass produced, is made up of a tiny steel tank containing refrigerant and a piped aluminium coil that releases gas from the tank.

Suh says the technology is cost-effective and vapour from the can is friendly to the environment. The coolant is harmless even if it accidentally leaks into the contents of the can.

Drinks firm Lotte Chilsung, which has about 40 per cent of South Korea's soft-drinks market and distributes PepsiCo products, is looking at apply the system to its canned drinks.

"We are checking what Icetec can do for us. But there is nothing concrete we can announce," said a Lotte Chilsung official.

Analysts said 210 billion cans of drink were sold worldwide each year, 3.6 billion of them in South Korea.

The technology, which works on beer, can be used for bottled drinks.

Suh sees this year's World Cup soccer finals being co-hosted by South Korea and Japan in June as a way to promote his device.

His firm, Icetec, will this year hand out samples to spectators during the finals.

Officials at the South Korean World Cup organising committee said they did not know about Suh's plan but the technology does have support from major Korean steel maker Pohang Iron and Steel.

It is helping Icetec's research and development in the hope the device boosts demand for its steel plate.

The steelmaker says the cans are easy to mass produce.

"Suh's products are almost complete by themselves. Mass production will probably be easily adopted because components are few and simple," said Kim Won-ki, team manager for Pohang's new material development division.

Although Suh is seeking business opportunities with large firms, the alternative is for him to go it alone with help from institutional investors

"The difficulty with venture capitalists like me is to persuade big companies to act quickly," said Suh.

"So, as an alternative, I am considering building my own assembly lines."

But analysts say this would be difficult.

Kim Yun-jung at Sejong Securities, said venture capitalists had a very low chance of commercialising their products without the help of big companies.