Sainsbury's is set to square up to traditional shoppers with a new approach to the old-fashioned round tin.

The supermarket giant has branded conventional round tins outdated, and has come up with an alternative which will fit into the contemporary shoppers' lifestyle much more easily.

Terry Robins, packaging innovation manager at the Jamie Oliver-fronted store, said: 'When you think about it, everything else in a supermarket is square – the trolleys, baskets, boxes, even the lorries which transport our food – so surely a square can makes a lot of sense.' The first food to be premiered with the angular containers will be Sainsbury's own-brand soup, and if all goes well with the trial tins, customers at Sainsbury's stores nationwide will no longer have to fret about cumbersome cans which don't quite reach the cupboard corners.

Ardent Sainsbury's shopper, and soup lover, Tom Basilica couldn't be more elated at the prospect. 'As a pensioner these new tins will turn my life around,' he squealed delightedly. 'Those old round tins are so difficult to pick up because they keep slipping through my fingers, now I'll have something to get a hold of.' Terry Robins knows he has done well, he adds: 'We will be able to fit 20 per cent more square cans on our shelves than round ones and our customers will be able to save a lot of space in their kitchen cupboards.' Sadly not everyone is as excited. Wisened supermarket shopper Mrs Hedgehog moaned to us: 'Why do they always have to change things? It's not like the old days when tins were tins, now they're square cans and you don't know what's going on with them.' It seems some people will never be completely satisfied.