In the overall U.S. beverage industry, cans account for 41 percent of the volume share in the market, says Jim Peterson, vice president of marketing and corporate affairs for Ball Corp. Although beer and carbonated soft drinks (CSDs) are popularly packaged in cans, other categories are starting to break into the packaging format because of the material’s portability, flexibility and sustainability benefits. For example, some companies are packaging wine in cans to capitalize on the package’s portability, Peterson says. Packaging water in cans has grown 30 percent since 2008, surpassing the 250 million unit mark in 2011, he adds. In the beer category, aluminum cans make up approximately 53 percent of the market, experts say.
"This growth is driven partly by a trend in craft brewing toward packaging in cans", Peterson says.
“The evolution of craft beer into cans continues at the staggering growth rate of roughly 150 percent in 2011 as more craft brewers have come to realize the economic and sustainability advantages of choosing cans,” Peterson says.
Up until this point, craft brewers faced three challenges: Volume, equipment and consumer perception, says Dale Katechis, founder and owner of Oskar Blues Brewery. The volume of beer made by craft brewers is much smaller than large beer makers, and at the time, it was difficult to find a can manufacturer that would sell its products in such a small quantity. Plus, the production equipment was not available for craft brewers prior to 2000, he says. The last and biggest hurdle has been the consumer’s perception of beer packaged in a can.
“There were a lot of myths out there that beer tasted like metal in a can, and they were indeed just that — they were modern day myths that the consumer really did believe to be true,” Katechis says. “Once we learned that they were all myths, we decided to challenge ourselves, the industry and the consumer that you could truly put craft beer in a can and it would be even more draft-like than our colleagues that were bottling their beer at the time.”
Recently, the beverage industry has seen multiple craft brewers latch on to this trend. More than 100 craft brewers now are canning their beers and it seems that a new one is being introduced every month, says Julia Herz, craft beer program director at the Brewers Association.