Beer industry | Small cans, long trip

The beer industry has abandoned the reusable glass bottle to massively adopt the aluminum can. Five years ago, cans and bottles were on par on the Quebec market. Today, around 80% of beer is drunk in cans, which means long journeys for the small container.

The big departure

Quebec is one of the largest producers of aluminum in the world and provides the raw material needed to manufacture beer cans and other beverages. Eight of the nine aluminum smelters installed in Canada are in Quebec. Almost all Quebec aluminum production, nearly 90%, is exported to the United States.

Become cans

The bullion must first cross the border. Aluminum can manufacturers are almost all located in the United States. Before becoming beer containers, the metal must be transformed into sheets in rolling mills also located on American soil. Companies like Novelis and Steel Dynamics are cashing in on the growing can craze. They have just announced multi-billion dollar investments in new rolling facilities to meet growing demand from aluminum can manufacturers.

Health !

Quebec breweries, large and small, all get their supplies from American manufacturers such as Crown Holdings or Ball Corporation, whose head office is in Colorado and which has facilities in Whitby, Ontario, and in New York State, closer to Montreal. Quebec aluminum racks up the miles and comes back in the form of cans that will then be filled with hopped drinks by brewers located across the province. It has sold and drunk over a billion units in 2021, for beer alone.

Scrap of 24 million

Beer cans are returnable containers that have a high value in the recycling market. This explains their high recovery rate, 70% for small cans and 93% for large ones. In total, the recovered cans bring in 24 million to the producers who recover them and who share the sum according to their share of the market.

Return to the United States

Aluminum is the material with the greatest value on the recovery market. Collectors like RecyCan, a private company equally owned by Molson and Labatt, collect aluminum cans from retail outlets. They get $1,500 a ton bale from Tomra, the Norwegian giant whose Quebec can-packing facilities are in Baie-d’Urfé. Tomra acts as an intermediary between the collectors and the recyclers, to whom the bales are finally resold. All of these can recyclers are American, which means that the crushed can resumes its journey to the United States to be remelted there at 700 degrees Celsius, reformed into sheets and cans, to eventually be bought back by Quebec brewers, filled and drunk here.

The best solution ?

The aluminum can is infinitely recyclable, but the journey it takes reduces the environmental benefits of the recycling process, says Mario Laquerre, professor at the Center for Training in Environment and Sustainable Development at the University of Sherbrooke. According to him, the process of recovering and recycling aluminum cans produces more greenhouse gases than recovering, washing and reusing glass bottles.

According to Recyc-Québec, the glass bottle, which can be reused up to ten times, is environmentally superior to the aluminum can when considering the product’s life cycle.

The fact that the glass bottle is on the way out goes against practices that encourage the reuse of containers of all kinds, according to Mario Laquerre. “This is one more incongruity in our recovery and recycling system. »

The dream of local cans

The project to manufacture aluminum cans in Quebec, the consumption of which is on the rise, is not dead, but it has not made much progress in recent years. Even Alu-Québec, the industrial cluster created to increase the use of aluminum in Quebec, more or less believes in it. “Our volume of cans is not sufficient to justify an investment in a rolling mill. It costs billions,” sums up Danielle Coudé, head of the Recovery and Recycling Project.

The long journey of the cans disturbs many of the members of the Association des microbrasseries du Québec, according to its general manager, Marie-Ève ​​Myrand. The aluminum can is so popular that supply is sometimes difficult, she says. Some microbreweries have had to bring it in from China and Mexico. “What we fear above all is that the refillable container will disappear, which would be a setback from an environmental point of view. »

The bobbin circuit

Here is a theoretical circuit that connects aluminum production facilities in Quebec to the nearest metal processors.

• From the Saguenay smelter to the Novelis rolling mill in Oswego, New York: 847 km
• From the rolling mill to the facilities of the Ball can manufacturer, in the State of New York: 272 km
• From the Ball plant to Montreal: 302 km

Total ingot to throat: 1421 km

The distances indicated are for a theoretical circuit between the nearest installations. Cans probably travel a lot more.