HOUSTON BREWERS FACE ALUMINUM CAN SHORTAGE

Aluminium can shortages hit the beverage industry last year and continue to affect supply chains this summer. In Houston, beverage manufacturers are forced to innovate to avoid running out. Aluminium can factories were already at capacity before COVID-19. The National Beer Wholesalers Association reports that the percentage of beer packaged in aluminum cans increased from 50% to 60% between 2010 and 2019. That figure shot up to 67% by 2020, according to the National Beer Wholesalers Association.

In the last decade, cans have also become more popular in other beverage markets. So when the pandemic shifted beer consumption from kegs to cans, aluminum can installations reached a tipping point. As U.S. can makers struggled with shortages, some turned to foreign markets. The Can Manufacturers Institute estimated that 2 billion empty cans would be imported by 2020.

Can manufacturing began to pick up the pace of demand in the spring of 2021, only to fall back to critical lows this summer. Local breweries found other creative ways around the shortage through strategic planning, labeling their own cans and sharing their stocks. Some brewing companies initially managed by keeping large inventories of cans, however, when the freezing of cans made it impossible to store them, breweries were forced to start managing their supply chain “actively and on a daily basis” to avoid running out of cans.

Others found another solution by buying unprinted cans and labeling them in-house. In the meantime, breweries that didn’t have labellers began to scramble to buy them. When strategies and labeling failed, some breweries enlisted the help of others in a kind of collaborative production. Fougeron says Southern Star Brewing “shared some cans they were no longer serving us” with Brash Brewing. “They wrapped their labels around our cans.”

But there are two other problems that exacerbate the shortage of aluminum cans. One is the shortage of truck drivers, to distribute the stocks. The other is the lack of storage capacity, which also inhibits the ability of breweries to build up their can supplies.

After dealing with a can shortage for more than seven months, brewers face an uncertain future. Brewers are hopeful that lower demand in the fall, along with new brewing plants, will help balance the shortage. Ball, the world’s largest manufacturer of metal beverage containers, has invested $300 million in the construction of a new aluminum can plant in Pennsylvania, due to open later this year.