Hindalco forms a consortium with Ball and Can-Pack India to promote use of aluminium beverage cans

In the first week of May Hindalco Industries, Ball Beverage Packaging (India) and Can-Pack India together announced the forming of a consortium called Aluminium Beverages Can Association of India (ABCAI) in order to promote the use of aluminium cans for beverage packaging in India.

ABCAI would partner with government organizations, corporates, trade bodies and consumers to do campaigns that will spread awareness on the economic and environmental benefits of aluminium cans for beverage packaging. It also plans to commission studies in order to showcase the various benefits of aluminium beverage cans in the field of logistics, refrigeration, water and power conservation.

Prakash Nedungadi, Group Head, Consumer Insights & Brand Development, Aditya Birla Group says that aluminium plays a significant role in the growing Indian packaging sector.  He sees the importance of creating awareness among consumers about the usage and believes that such a consortium can bridge the awareness gap in India.

“We aim to convert one in every four beverage packages in India to aluminium by 2030,” he said.

“Looking at the global benchmarks — 70 or 40 cans per capita versus our one — there obviously is an opportunity to grow. Therefore, when we say we want to go from one can to eight cans per capita over the next 11-12 years, we think it’s a reasonable goal, which we should all work towards. Then we can then see whether we want to raise that further,” Nedungadi said.

India’s annual per capita consumption of cans is a far behind when compared to countries like Brazil, China, Vietnam and the U.S. that register per capita consumption of 97, 39, 70 and 288 respectively. About 5% of beverage packaging in India is comprised of aluminium. The number of packaged beverage consumed in India is expected to reach 50 billion a year by 2030 from 20 billion at present.  

While emphasising on the logistic and cooling advantages of aluminium cans, he also pointed towards its easy-to-carry, easy-to-dispose qualities. However, infinite recyclability remains the key advantage of aluminium cans that makes its an eco-friendly packaging.