Welcome to February

Hello all. I’m very happy to be addressing you after what feels like quite a long January (and even longer for those who’ve been adhering to the rules of ‘Dry January!’). Now that we’re fully into the stride of 2021, we can more fully take stock of the year ahead and address what planning can be done. Six months ago many of us in the UK would not have envisaged a third lockdown and yet here we are, again working from home and socially isolating. And yet with the rapid expansion of vaccination programmes around the world, this does offer a beacon of promise with which to focus and continue to do our business, confident that this will be the first major step towards normality.

I’ve said it before on several occasions, the beverage and can industry seems to be steaming ahead in terms of commercial

expansion, if this magazine’s newsfeed is anything to go by. Crown’s announcement to construct a new plant in Virginia in response to the massively increased demand in cans in 2020, as well as pumping investment into its sixth can plant in Brazil, is a great move towards reducing carbon emissions in freight movement to markets in the Americas. Ball also announced it would be building a €170 million plant in Czechia to meet increasingly demands in the Eastern European markets – another sign of a healthy industry!

On the sustainability front, it was welcoming to see UK based Iced Coffee brand Jimmy’s discard its Tetra-pack format with infinitely recyclable cans, Michelob Ultra will now only be using a new ‘carbon free’ aluminium in all cans moving forward, and the news that 2020 was a record year for aluminium packaging recycling. Terrific news all round and a great start to the year.

On a side note, Valentine’s Day is around the corner, and Heinz are turning things up a notch with their saucy spaghetti ‘Marry Me’ cans. Follow the instructions on the Heinz Facebook page for the chance to get one of these for free!

Now as many of you know, every year we publish a fully printed annual, covering highlights of the year gone by, industry insights and more. This year’s copy is imminent, so be sure to look out for it, and I hope you enjoy!

 

 

 

Janis Osborn

Publisher

janis@canmakingnews.com