Thriving amid international challenges

Andreia Nogueira reports on the Brazilian metal can sector.

The Brazilian metal can industry is thriving amid international challenges, with sustainability and health concerns boosting demand for metal as a packaging material in South America’s largest economy.

According to data released in March 2025 by the Brazilian Association of Aluminium Can Manufacturers (Associação Brasileira dos Fabricantes de Latas de Alta Reciclabilidade – or Abralatas), 34.8 billion units of aluminium cans for beverages were sold in Brazil, 7.6 per cent more than in 2023. In a communiqué, Abralatas said this growth had been fuelled by the “wide variety of beverages packaged in aluminium cans,” from beer to mineral waters and soft drinks. Additionally, Brazil’s often hot climate increases canned product sales, which can be cooled in fridges.

There has also been an increase in the population’s purchasing power with Brazil’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growing by 3.4 per cent in 2024, according to the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE – Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística).

Beer is affordable in Brazil. In 2024, the average price for consumers per litre, across different sizes and formats, was Brazilian Reals BRL14 (US$2.42) per litre, in a country where the monthly minimum wage is BRL1,518 ($263), and according to the World Bank, GDP per head was $10,294 in 2023.

Regarding market trends, Abralatas said 350ml sleek cans, taller and thinner than traditional (350ml) cans, “have become synonymous with ‘premium’ beverages” in Brazil, having achieved sales growth of 36 per cent last year, compared to 2023. It added that sales of larger 473ml cans, popularly known as ‘latão,’ registered a 22 per cent increase, while “the traditional 350ml cans saw as light decline, but still represent the majority of the market.”

Cátilo Cândido, CEO of Abralatas, told CanTech International that the “beer and soft drinks segment remains the most significant” sector in Brazil, “but the market has been diversifying. Beverages such as juices, teas, wines and ready-todrink alcoholic drinks have been gaining ground, driven by the search for practical, safe and sustainable packaging. A recent highlight is canned mineral water, which has shown significant triple-digit growth in recent years.”

According to Paulo Petroni, general director at the Brazilian Beer Industry Association (CervBrasil), beer is Brazil’s most popular alcoholic beverage, with around 15.5 billion litres produced in 2024, nearly all for domestic consumption, – boosting can sales.

In 2024, the beer sector contributed Brazilian Reals BRL216.3 billion ($37.37 billion) to the Brazilian economy, 9 per cent more than in 2023, said Petroni, noting that in 2024, for retail beer sales, “we had 52 per cent in cans and 48 per cent in glass bottles,” he said, adding: “The share of can packaging compared to glass grows between three and five per cent per year.”

“In the food segment, there is a great demand for vegetables (legumes and pulses), fish, milk and chocolate drinks packaged in steel cans,” said Thais Fagury, executive president of the Brazilian Steel Packaging Association (Associação Brasileira de Embalagem de Aço – Abeaço), stressing that canned sardines and tomato products “are rarely absent” in Brazilian kitchens.

She added that feijoada, a hearty stew made with beans and various meats, which is a traditional dish in Brazil, is also sold in steel cans. She added, “Another important market is dairy products such as powdered milk and condensed milk, in addition to decorative cans, which contain differentiated products, such as cookies and chocolates.”

Consumers look for sustainable options

Fagury emphasised that metal cans do not require “the addition of chemical additives” to preserve food. She also stressed that by being “infinitely recyclable,” cans meet Brazilian consumer preferences, and Brazil “has a well-developed reverse logistics” for this segment, with more than 319,000 tonnes of post-consumer steel packaging properly recycled, reused and recovered over the past five years.

Moreover, “For over 15 years, Brazil has been a world leader in post-consumer aluminium can recycling, with rates above 95 per cent,” stressed US-based producer of flat-rolled aluminium solutions and aluminium recycler Novelis, which has been producing can body stock, can end stock and tab stock for the beverage industry with high recycled content in Brazil.

With 1,700 employees and two plants in the country, Novelis “operates the largest integrated aluminium recycling and rolling complex in the world,” with a “rolling capacity of 720,000 tonnes per year and a recycling capacity of 500,000 tonnes per year,” in Pindamonhangaba, in São Paulo state. The complex supports “the growth in demand for flat-rolled aluminium” on the Mercosur free trade bloc of Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia, Paraguay and Uruguay. An expansion project of this plant to increase the capacity to 750,000 tonnes per year is expected to be completed this year.

Beer is the most consumed beverage in Brazil, with sales boosting demand for cans. Image: Andreia Nogueira

Thriving in a complex world

However, the company is facing “increasing competition” for scrap thanks to growing demand and “is worried about increasing trade diversion from China to Brazil” as a result of the new 25 per cent tariffs on all steel and aluminium imports entering the US, imposed on 12 March 2025. Abeaço’s Fagury warned that these tariffs “will clearly bring excess steel capacity to Brazil,” since in 2024, the country “exported 4.1 million tonnes of steel to the US, the second largest supplier of the product to the country.”

That US protection might encourage the Brazilian government to hang tough with its plans to impose anti-dumping duties on imports of these Chinese materials, Fagury warned. Brazil applied temporary anti-dumping duties in October 2024, making the import price of metal sheets from China 35 per cent higher, according to Abeaço. It is fighting this duty, as the Brazilian government decides whether to impose definitive anti-dumping duties, with the end of a final antidumping investigation scheduled for September 2025.

Abeaço, which wants access to well-priced Brazilian steel, has accused the government in a statement of favouring the monopoly of the only company producing steel for packaging in Brazil, the public Companhia Siderúrgica Nacional.

Promising future

Despite the instability over supplies, Fagury still believes in a promising future for steel cans in Brazil, “due to their attributes related to health, safety and the environment.”

Petroni, from CervBrasil, is also optimistic about aluminium cans being used by brewers. In a country with 212.58 million people and a per capita consumption of 72 litres (of beer) per year, in all formats, tariffs might have less impact on aluminium cans made in Brazil, given beer can materials are “mainly produced” domestically.

Cândido, from Abralatas, is also optimistic about the future despite uncertainty in the global economy, “which may impact consumers’ purchasing power and the dynamics of international trade because the aluminium can sector has demonstrated resilience, with continuous growth in recent years.” That said, he is “in dialogue with authorities to minimise the impacts (of Trump’s tariffs) and seek strategic solutions.”

To him, aluminium cans “stand out as the packaging of the future” because they are “practical and safe,” ensuring better preservation of beverage flavours and enabling fast cooling in fridges. The are also and the most sustainable packaging solution available, meeting a growing Brazilian “trend towards conscious consumption.”

In November 2024, Abralatas announced that Brazil became “the first country with a (voluntary and public) quality standard for aluminium cans,” issued by the Brazilian Association of Technical Standards (Associação Brasileira de Normas Técnicas – ABNT) in partnership with Abralatas, to guarantee “even more safety and confidence” by defining “the visual, dimensional and functional characteristics of aluminium cans and specifications for transporting, handling, storing and even filling beverages.”

Cândido also praised a Brazilian ‘Selective Tax’ approved in principle in January 2025, known as the ‘sin tax’, which will be introduced from 2026, with different rates for different products, under upcoming secondary regulations. It will be levied on products considered harmful for health and the environment – it is unclear yet how this will impact products such as canned sugary and alcoholic drinks, which might be deemed bad for human health and good for recycling.

In 2024, the centre-left government of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva also released a food contact regulation in April, entering into force in October via the Brazilian Health Regulatory Agency (Anvisa), “setting out health requirements applicable to packaging, coatings, utensils, lids and metal equipment intended to come into contact with food.” This includes, for instance, that “metallic materials cannot contain more than 1 per cent of impurities consisting of lead, arsenic, cadmium, mercury and antimony, considered together.”

“Companies in the sector already fully comply with the new standard, with no impact on the quality, safety or sustainability of aluminium cans. Brazil has one of the most advanced regulatory standards for metal packaging,” claimed Cândido.

Considering this potential, construction of a new plant of the Poland-based Canpack Group is scheduled to start this year in Poço de Caldas, in southeast Brazil. Its initial total installed capacity will be approximately 1.3 billion cans per year once it opens in 2027.

This illustrates how Brazil is a major player in the global can making and filling sector. Indeed, according to market research firm, Mordor Intelligence, the overall Brazilian packaging market revenue is estimated at $38.53 billion in 2025 and expected to reach $47.33 billion by 2030.

With such regulations and growing consumer demand for more sustainable options, metal cans might well increase their share of this market.