Maintaining healthy growth

The Belgian can market is a beacon of environmental good practice, say experts. Liz Newmark reports from Brussels

Belgium is a beer heavyweight in global markets, and hence a major source of canning demand, with 417 brewers according to the country’s industry association, Belgian Brewers, providing nearly 7,000 jobs. It is the fifth biggest producer in Europe, producing 2.047 billion litres of beer in 2023, according to the latest European Union (EU) statistical agency Eurostat figures.

The country of 11.7 million inhabitants is tightly integrated into European transport networks, bordering France, Germany, the Netherlands  and Luxembourg, giving its can fillers and metal packaging makers efficient access to major and populous export markets. That said, Maarten Labberton, director of the packaging group at the Brussels-based European Aluminium (EA), told CanTech International that Belgium imports a significant proportion of its metal packaging, plus can ends for assembling, finishing and filling for its commonly canned consumable products. These range from Abbey/Abbaye/Abbij beers to Zwan sausages – a common sight in the country. The reason is that there is little aluminium production in Belgium, although its solid recycling programmes harvest a ready supply – for instance Belgian scrap trader, Galloo, collects aluminium from incinerator bottom ash.

Indeed, Belgum is top of the packaging waste recovery and recycling European Union (EU) league table with an 80.4% recycling and 99.1% recovery rate recorded in 2021 for all packaging materials, ahead of the Netherlands and Luxembourg. An  impressive 94% aluminium can recycling rate contributes to this result.

As elsewhere, sales and production figures of cans in Belgium mainly relate to aluminium. According to Eurostat, in 2023 the ‘sold production value’ (production carried out within Belgium and invoices) of aluminium cans (as well as casks, drums, boxes and similar containers) was EUR€88.78 million, up from €64.49 million in 2022.

Belgium also records healthy export figures of €75.09 million in this category, a noteworthy hike over the €54.25 million’s worth shown in 2022, said Eurostat. It imported €16.5 million’s worth of aluminium casks, drums, cans, boxes and similar containers in 2023. Belgium’s national statistical agency, Statbel, told CanTech that the value of Belgian production of all light metal packaging in 2023 was €91.05 million, a significant increase from the €66.78 million figure for 2022. This data focuses largely on aluminium products, with assessed steel lines being restricted to stoppers, caps, lids, sealing articles and capsules.

Nonetheless, this is a substantial amount, with metal packaging widely available in Belgium for food, drink and homeware, including paint and coatings. Aluminium is the prime material for drinks cans, but steel is also used in packaging Illy (iIlycaffè) Classico coffee and Ricola’s ‘Good Night’ drink, for example. For food, there are common purchases of steel canned tomatoes, vegetables, spaghetti Bolognese and baby milk – all majorsellers in Belgium.

Belgian can manufacturers include Genk, Limburg-based Benepack Belgium NV, a startup company claiming to be the first company in Belgium that produces aluminium beverage cans in the country. In July 2020, the plant started commercial operation with 330ml and 500ml cans. In one year, one billion aluminium cans were produced – a revolution for the Benelux can market. It also produces slimline 250ml and 330ml cans.

In addition, Spanish company Alucan, producer of aluminium bottles, opened a new plant in Lummen, Limbourg, in 2023.

Patricia Mobbs, communications manager for the Brussels-based Steel for Packaging Europe (formerly the Association of European Producers of Steel for Packaging – APEAL), said that none of its member organisations produce steel for packaging in Belgium although “steel (coil) manufacturing does take place in the country, for example ArcelorMittal in Ghent.”

However, there are companies active in selling metal products, like Wommelgem-based Trexim, whose “tailor-made metal boxes” are imported from the Far East. It also describes itself as “one of the biggest producers of tinplate and aluminium closures, as well as aluminium monobloc aerosol cans and aluminium bottles, for some of the world’s best known consumer brands in food, beverages, spirits, cosmetics, nutraceuticals, pharmaceuticals, industrial and household products.”

Eddy current (non-ferrous metal sorting) at Valtris, one of the six sorting centres for the Blue Bag recycling system in Belgium, to optimise the sorting of aluminium packaging waste. Image: Fost Plus

Popular beverages

It is canned beer that is the highest profile metal packaging market in Belgium. The country is a major beer maker. Belgium is home to at least 1,300 brands of beer according to the Belgian Beer Factory, and its market was valued at €3.9 billion in December 2023 by Paris-based market research specialist, Businesscoot. Major brands including Mechelen-based Maes (owned by Heineken) or InBev’s Stella Artois – still headquartered in Leuven – predominantly pack their drinks in cans. Other InBev brands including Leffe and Hoegaarden (for ‘blanche’ beer), while also common in bottles, are increasingly sold in cans.

“Most customers buy beer, except for speciality brands, in cans,” a Delhaize supermarket sales manager told CanTech. Speciality or more luxurious beer and soft drinks are more commonly sold and bought in glass bottles, she said. But they, along with craft beers and locally-produced sodas, are also canned, including the Brussels Beer Project’s Pico Bello and Delta IPA and BelleVue’s ‘Kriek’ cherry beer, which is canned and bottled.

Fruit-flavoured beers or alcoholic drinks aimed at the younger market are also predominantly sold in cans. Favourites include a passion-fruit Desperado, made in Alken; and the Prik & Tik Zonhovendistributed Eristoff vodka and tonic drinks. Popular canned non-alcoholic drinks in supermarkets range from San Pellegrino’s fruit soda waters to Monster and Nalu energy drinks, said the supermarket retailer. Even Orangina, known for its iconic oval bottle, is now available in cans.

Food and drink price increases have dampened sales overall, however. Last year there was an average increase of 12.7% in food prices recorded in 2023 by Belgium’s economy ministry. However, its report stressed that general inflation is decreasing, finishing last year at 2.3%, according to the Flanders news service, VRT. This September (2024), general inflation was only 3.06%, slightly up from 2.86% in August and down from 3.64% in July, Statbel announced on 27 September.

In addition, a February 2024 note from BNP Paribas Fortis’ (one of Belgium’s main banks) economic research department said that despite last year’s challenging international environment and fears of a recession or slowdown in 2023, the Belgian economy “appears to be growing.” Companies are able to adapt to higher energy and labour costs, by greening production processes for example, it said. The EU predicts Belgium’s GDP will grow at a sluggish 1.3% in 2024, however.

Meanwhile, an August 2024 GlobalData market report on Belgium’s beer and cider market notes Belgium recorded a 1.4% GDP growth in 2023, “thanks to strong private consumption and a recovery in corporate investment.” Most Belgians continued to favour regular-strength beers, mainly sold in cans, said the report. A significant and growing number chose no/low alcohol beers for health and lifestyle reasons, said GlobalData, with popular choices again Jupiler, Stella, Maes and Leffe.

Its researchers also said Belgian consumers increasingly prefer premium brands, for their “high quality and/or natural ingredients,” indicating a shift away from standard beers.

Soft drink can sales are strong too. While PepsiCo has no base in Belgium, Coca-Cola has two production and distribution sites in Antwerp and Ghent, while it produces and distributes the
Chaudfontaine water brand, also sold in cans, in the town of the same name near Liège.

With steel cans for vegetables and aluminium for speciality alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks, Belgium’s food and drink can market is booming. Image: Luc Edwards

Sustainable measures

Crown Holdings operates a stretch film facility in Virton, Luxembourg province, whose products can wrap can pallets, which the corporation recognised in 2019 for its investment in a reclaim line that enabled 90% of its waste to be reprocessed and upcycled.

Such sustainability is a key feature of the Belgian metal packaging market. Belgium excels in aluminium can recycling. The latest EA figures released in February 2024 show Belgium third in the table for 2021, with a 94% recycling rate, just behind Finland with 97% and Germany with 99%.

Steve Claus, secretary general of Steel for Packaging Europe, said that steel too was “an excellent choice for cans” within Belgium’s sustainability-focused metal packaging sector. “The industry is constantly innovating, making steady progress on lightweighting and carbon reduction,” he told CanTech.

“With primary production processes revolutionised, carbon emissions will be cut by 55% by 2030, compared to 1990 levels,” minimising associated carbon releases. “This industry-wide approach to innovation is in our DNA and not specific to Belgium,” Claus added, noting steel was also the most recycled (by proportion of overall volumes) primary packaging material in Europe. Independently verified figures show that 80.5% of steel packaging was “really recycled” in 2022, he said, with Belgium’s performance “excellent with a recycling rate of 100%.”

“Once collected, from kerbside or other, used steel packaging is sent for recycling in any one of the 200 plus steel plants in Europe, together with other steel scrap collected,” said Patricia Mobbs. “This could be in Belgium (eg Arcelor Mittal in Ghent) or another country in Europe. One hundred per cent of the recycled scrap is melted down and used to make new steel products in an endless cycle.”

On the environmental front, Claus highlighted the increasing replacement of hexavalent chromium in the passivation of electrolytic tinplated steel (ETP) with chrome free passivation alternative (CFPA), helping the can industry meet increasingly strict Belgian environmental laws. These include the Belgium Royal Decree of 17 February 2021, on metal and alloy materials and objects in contact with foodstuffs.

“Tinplate cans made with CFPA are already on the shelves, as can makers adopt CFPA with positive results,” Claus said. “All Steel for Packaging members have CFPA lines that can supply material at industrial scale. Extensive testing by can makers continues to be carried out to ensure the high level of consumer safety expected of steel for packaging is maintained in future.”

Lightweighting is also important, with the international drinks industry-funded organisation Every Can Counts noting that only 12.2 kg of aluminium is now needed to manufacture 1,000 33cl aluminium drink cans.

Valerie Bruyninckx, corporate communication and PR manager at Belgium’s sorting and recycling organisation, Fost Plus, said aluminium and ferrous metal packaging material recycling rates in Belgium related to Fost Plus’s 4,921 member companies were excellent – 94% for aluminium and 105% for ferrous metals in 2023, the same as for 2022. That is despite no new recycling plants opening in Belgium during the past year.

That said, Elise Regairaz, coordinator at AREME, Belgium’s light aluminium packaging sorting and recycling company, told CanTech that all packaging sorting centres in Belgium have been equipped in 2023 with a second magnetised eddy current which would further improve the sorting of aluminium packaging and coffee capsules.

Belgium-headquartered Every Can Counts hopes such improvements can be combined with the “infinitely recyclable” nature of cans, “whatever their colour, size or shape,” to achieve a Belgian (and European) recycling rate for aluminium cans of 100% by 2050.

The EA’s Labberton particularly recommends deposit return schemes and reverse vending machines to boost recycling rates and allow customers to have high recycled content in new cans, also benefiting the can market in general.

Lyons, France-based ReportLinker is already predicting that the recycled metal packaging market will increase in Belgium, with 123,000 tonnes recycled in 2024, rising to 125,580 tonnes in 2028, a “consistent year-on-year growth, albeit at a modest rate,” said the market intelligence platform.

Meanwhile, one Belgian artist who has fully embraced recycled aluminium cans is Alfredo Longo. His recent exhibition of aluminium can sculptures (displayed at Mons, Hainaut’s Grand Place and Salle Saint-Georges), featuring a heart specially made for Every Can Counts Benelux, a running man and a ‘blue whale,’ show how can recycling helps preserve the environmental health of Belgium and beyond.