The short answer: Ball Mason jars are still real Ball-branded jars, but Ball Corporation does not manufacture them. Ball sold its home-canning business in 1993, and Newell Brands is now the exclusive provider of genuine Ball home-canning products under license.
Yes, the Ball Logo Is Still Ball. No, Ball Corporation Does Not Make the Jars.
This is one of those facts that sounds like a setup for a lawsuit.
The jar says Ball. The company Ball exists. The company Ball says it does not make the Ball jars.
Ball Corporation confirms that it sold the home-canning business in 1993. Newell Brands now supplies genuine Ball home-canning products, while the Ball trademarks remain Ball Corporation trademarks used under license.
Brand licensing: because apparently even a pickle jar can have a complicated corporate family tree.
Ball Really Did Start With Jars
The weird part is that jars are not some random product that borrowed the Ball name later. The history goes all the way back to the Ball brothers.
Newell Brands says the first Ball-branded glass jars were produced in 1884 after the brothers built their glass-manufacturing business. Ball eventually became one of the names Americans practically use as shorthand for Mason jars.
Then the company kept evolving, which is corporate language for “we started with preserves and somehow ended up discussing spacecraft.”
The Ball Company Also Went Into Aerospace. Because Why Not?
In the 1950s, Edmund F. Ball helped create the research operation that eventually became Ball Aerospace. It grew into a major space and defense business.
So for years, the same corporate family tree genuinely connected Mason jars and spacecraft.
That sentence should not work. It does.
But Ball Does Not Own Ball Aerospace Anymore Either
The old version of this article said Ball “today” had a secret aerospace division. That stopped being true before the article was even published.
Ball Corporation completed the sale of Ball Aerospace to BAE Systems in February 2024 for about $5.6 billion. The former Ball Aerospace operation became BAE Systems’ Space & Mission Systems business.
So the current scorecard is:
- Ball Mason jars: made by the Newell Brands home-canning business under the Ball name.
- Ball Corporation: focused on aluminum packaging.
- Former Ball Aerospace: now part of BAE Systems.
I assume the next logical move is for the jars to acquire the space company and restore order.
Why Do Ball Mason Jars Still Say Ball?
Because the brand lives on even though the original corporation exited the home-canning business. Newell Brands is licensed to use the Ball name on genuine home-canning products.
Which means the jar in your pantry is not lying to you.
It is just making you read the corporate footnotes.