Huge towers of empty aluminum beverage cans line the floor of Ball Corp.’s Golden warehouse, labeled with brands such as Minute Maid, Brisk, Redd’s, Rockstar and Twisted Tea.

Workers navigate forklifts through the aisles, stacking pallets filled with cans destined for big manufacturers that will fill them with Coke, Pepsi, Budweiser and Coors.

Chances are good that most people have, at some point, sipped a beverage from a can made in this plant or one of the 69 others owned by Broomfield-based Ball, now the world’s largest aluminum beverage can maker.

About a third of all canned drinks sold each year are brought to market in a Ball-made can. In Golden, where manufacturing and storage operations span 500,000 square feet, aluminum beverage cans are formed, tested and labeled with the names and logos of brands familiar to consumers shopping in the beverage aisles of giant grocery stores and to people picking up a six-pack at a local craft brewery.

The Golden plant operates 24/7 and this year will produce cans for about 1,100 different products. About a third of those are in the warehouse at any given time. The site’s four lines — three for cans and one for aluminum bottles — churn out about 6 million containers daily.

The cans and bottles will be shipped empty and without lids to California, Mexico, Puerto Rico, North Carolina and Canada, among other places. The lids — called ends — also are produced in Golden, at a rate of 24 million every day.

Opened in 1962, the Indiana Street plant employs 320 people and is the oldest in Ball’s system, the first of now 70 beverage packaging locations in 30 countries.

Ball acquired London-headquartered Rexam PLC on June 30 to become the world’s largest maker of food and beverage cans. Beverage can production is Ball’s largest business globally. The company ditched the glass business (think Ball jars) in 1996, but it’s still a major player in aerospace (think weather satellites and space telescopes).

Inside the Golden plant, which also produces the aluminum bottles often seen in stadiums, yellow safety railings separate visitors from the massive green machines. The din generated as cans fly off the fastest line at a rate of 1,800 per minute is audible through hearing protection.

The can-making process starts with a 4-foot-wide coil of sheet aluminum made up of 70 percent recycled content. About 300,000 to 350,000 containers can be made from each roll, Golden plant manager Mark Middleton estimates. Because Ball’s cans are getting lighter, the plant uses 40 percent less metal than it did in 1970.

The coil is fed into the cupper, which punches circles into the aluminum sheet. It forms the flat disks into short, wide cups that look more like dishes than anything used to hold a drink. The bodymaker draws out the aluminum and irons the cups into cans, which are then trimmed to ensure the open ends are uniform in height. They’re measured down to the ten-thousandth of an inch.

They’re then washed and decorated with up to six colors. The exteriors are protected with varnish, and sprayers apply a thin layer of coating to the can’s interior. The coating protects both the can from the beverage and the beverage from the can. How much protection each can gets depends on what goes in it; beer cans require less than those made for soda. Cans are then made narrower at the top, or necked. The narrower they are, the more money the company saves per lid.

“When you make 8 billion of them a year, even a small change adds up to a substantial amount,” Middleton said.

The cans are then sent through the flanger, which rolls the top edge back so that ends can be applied after the cans are filled.

Across one aisle, hundreds of 24-ounce aluminum cans whiz past every minute. Sensors monitor green cans sporting the Mickey’s malt liquor logo as they move down the line. Every so often, one drops into a bin positioned below, having been rejected from the lineup.

After tests of characteristics such as lining, thickness, height, weight, diameter and strength, the cans make their way to the palletizer, which places finished cans for storage or shipment.

It takes about 40 to 45 minutes for a can to make it from the coil through the lines and onto a pallet.

The ends start as shells, which are lined, stamped and joined with a tab. They’re bagged 300 to a sleeve.

Bagging was Middleton’s first job. It used to be done manually.

While the 12-ounce can is standard, Balls makes more than 20 varieties of aluminum beverage containers. Specialty packaging makes up 30 percent of the business.

The Coke contour bottle came on the scene last year. Coors bottles with thermographic inks, blue interior liners, screw tops and photo-quality graphics are also made specially.

The image on each can is a reflection of the brand. Coke, historically a classic, launched the “Share a Coke” campaign, which personalizes names and other descriptors on its cans.

Labels changes are made fairly easily, Middleton said. And they can be good for the beverage companies’ business. Sales spiked when Miller Lite ditched the blue can and switched back to its original white-label graphic, Ball spokesman Scott McCarty said.

The first time Ball runs a new label, the beverage company will typically have a representative on site to approve all the colors, Middleton said. Upon approval, it’s Ball’s responsibility to make sure the rest of the run meets the standard.

Smaller clients, like craft breweries, use intricately designed imagery to set themselves apart.

“They need to be seen in any way they can,” Middleton said. “So they’ll take a risk or make these interesting graphics, whereas the big companies like Coca-Cola, AB, Pepsi, they’re never going to stray too far from what they’ve always been because they always want you to know you’re looking at a Coke, or a Bud, or a Pepsi, or whatever. These small craft breweries don’t have that. They don’t have decades of branding that everybody knows, so they have to get it out there somehow.”

In some ways, the medium is the message. Red Bull, with its 8.4-ounce can, created an entirely new can type that identified energy drinks, McCarty said.

And unlike most plastic or glass containers, the aluminum can is a blank canvas. It’s a soundboard for brands that one-ups a plastic or paper wraparound label.

The aluminum material blocks light, and the seal keeps oxygen out. The can protects the beverage better than any other packaging, Middleton said.

“It’s why you’re seeing so many craft breweries go to cans over the last 10 years,” McCarty said.

But the conversion to cans wasn’t an easy leap for consumers, some of whom thought beer tasted better out of a bottle than a can, Middleton said. But, McCarty added, the perception had to do with which brews were in cans at the time.

Ball has about 400 craft brewery customers, and that number keeps growing, McCarty said.

“They figured out this package protects their product,” he said. “And consumers have gotten over that whole image issue and recognized that if you want to take your beer with you on a hike, or to a picnic, or to the beach, or the pool with you, you can’t take it in glass, so you take it in a can.”