This is a follow up article to my previous "Story of Serbian crown caps producer Galeb Metal Pack (GMP)". Getting to know producers of crown caps and change of their Factory Signs (FS) over time is crutial to being able to date caps from the 20th century. For caps of the 21. century we have many more sources of information: You Tube that started in 2005. and magazine and news articles online about new beers and beverages. For the 1980's and 1990's we rely on bottle label and can collectors. Unfortunately more than 2 / 3 of their items are unused or incomplete labels (the date may be on the back or neck label that is missing or not collected) which do not have dates / years of production or "best use by" dates. For the 1970's and earlier caps even used labels didn't have years, so dating caps becomes increasingly difficult, and has to be done within the margin of a decade.

This article is about 2 crown cap producers from Croatia and Slovenia with main FSs "PZ" and "PL", where initial letter 'P' stand for "pluta" (cork in those languages), and second letter for Croatian capital Zagreb or Slovenian Ljubljana. Here is how the evolution of their FSs relates to their company's history:

Plutal 2000 d.o.o, Ljubljana, Slovenija was founded in 1912, but is since 2001. part of Roland Rauh Küps RRK (Germany). Recently production of crown caps has stoped, and now they only make screw bottle caps.

factory sign (FS)	FS transcription	period of use
	PLUTAL LJUBLJANA	1960's
	P L circled	1960's and 1970's
	P LJ circled	1969. - 1993. - 2014.
	S circled, P LJ circled	1973. - 1983.
	mgk circled, P LJ circled	1984. - 1993.
	l circled, P LJ circled	1990's, few caps
	l circled, P L circled	1970's - 1990's
	PL circled	cca. 2000. - 2016.

PLUTO d.d. was founded in 1921. and was headquartered in Hrvatski Leskovac - Zagreb. It existed until 2006. when it was aquired by MGK Pack (former Metalografički kombinat, Rijeka, where acronym "mgk" comes from).

factory sign (FS)	FS transcription	period of use
	PLUTO ZAGREB	1960's and 1970's
	l circled	1960's and 1970's
	l circled, PZ circled	1974. - 2004.
	PZ circled	1970's, until 2006.
	mgk circled, PZ circled	1987. - 1997.
	PZ circled, MGK	2006. - 2014.
	MGK, PZ circled	2008. - 2014.
	MGK	2014. - 2016.

Another Croatian cap producer active during 1999. - 2015. period was Metalgraf d.o.o..
 

Mihailo Alić, researcher and collector, Belgrade, October 2021.

http://www.ultrahome.in.rs/crowncaps
http://crowncaps.info/collections/4946

previous article: Development of logos on crown caps of the three major beer brands in Serbia in the 21st century

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