Commentary

Challenging Times for the International Aluminium Aerosol Can Industry

from Gregor Spengler, AEROBAL Secretary General

Everybody who thought that the COVID-19 crisis would be quickly fixed was utterly wrong. To the contrary, the crisis is here to stay and will accompany us also in the year 2021, even if a vaccine will be available.

Such a long crisis period with lockdowns, restricted movement and living conditions, less socializing as well as changing consumer behavior, mindsets and spending will definitely leave its mark in the global economy and in some key markets of the aluminium aerosol can industry as well.

At the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis the packaging industry played an important role as systemically relevant sector for the provision of consumers with essential goods such as hygiene, food and pharmaceutical products. In that period, the industry even benefitted from extraordinary demand especially for disinfectant and hygiene products.

However, the ongoing crisis and the related changes in consumer behavior and spending are now negatively affecting the cosmetics and body care market which is the key market for the aluminium aerosol can industry with about 80 percent of total production.

Curfews, restricted socializing, and generally less direct contacts with other people are very much likely to boil down to less use of body care and cosmetic products because people simply do not go out as much as before the crisis. In addition, increasing unemployment and uneasiness about the future will shape our lives, affect consumers’ purchasing power in general and increasingly force them to focus their spending on “really essential” products. Not a very promising environment for (premium) cosmetics and body care products.

Decreasing spending for cosmetics and body care products will also shift brand owners’ priorities. Cost savings will come to the top of the agenda and affect packaging design, too. It is most likely that there will be a trend towards less complex packaging structures.

While companies’ recession priorities focus on the importance of cost-cutting, less complexity and competitive prices to appeal cash-strapped consumers, they will also be forced not do lose sight of the climate crisis and the related threats for our society. Therefore, brand owners also need to invest in more sustainable, recyclable packaging and increased resource efficiency in order to achieve a true circular economy and their own ambitious self-commitments.

Aluminium’s convincing properties as permanent material are a perfect enabler to reach this goal. The aluminium industry has already made great strides towards closing the material loop. Nevertheless, it will be a huge challenge for the industry to live up to the increasing demand of major brand owners to go to the next level of closing the product loop instead of the material loop. In fact, customers are asking for continuously increasing recycled content in aluminium aerosol cans. The lacking availability of high-quality scrap and the existence of different, sometimes patented alloys in can production are some of the main bottlenecks of a product-to-product recycling solution. In addition, it is questionable whether a closed product loop is really more sustainable than a closed material loop because a closed product loop causes more and longer transportation of scrap, more complex sorting and higher remelting losses which are negatively influencing the carbon footprint compared to a closed material loop.

If, nevertheless, the closing of the product loop is customers’ first choice in future - for example for marketing reasons or due to legislative measures to increase recycled content in all packaging - joint efforts of the value chain and innovative spirit are needed to establish a collection and sorting infrastructure which ensures sufficient availability of high quality aluminium scrap. In this context it could be helpful that thanks to the high value of aluminium it really pays off to invest in aluminium packaging sorting and recycling. However, in the end, the recycled material must be able to live up to the complex requirements for the production of pressurized aluminium aerosol cans, quantity- and quality-wise.