Novelis and Ball showcase sustainable aluminium can packaging

Sep 19, 2023

Aluminium beverage can sheet giant Novelis is continuing to invest in light-weighting technology and to vastly increase the use of scrap material.

Novelis has spent billions of dollars to upgrade its Warrington facility to make it the largest rolling mill complex in the world – a capacity of one million tonnes of aluminium.

It is one of the main producers of aluminium beverage can sheet and the world's largest recycler and buyer of used beverage cans (UBCs).

The majority of the cans recycled in Warrington are from the UK, but there are a significant number also from abroad – mainly the Baltics and Scandinavia where there is no dedicated bespoke can-to-can recycling facility of this level.

"Our sustainability goal is to bring light-weighting into applications," said Andy Doran, Novelis Europe senior manager, sustainability and recycling development. "And the biggest delivery of sustainability goals is the increasing amount of scrap that we use. From 2011-2019 we moved from using a third of our materials from scrap to now our materials being made up of two thirds scrap.

"That's around 61% materials we use come from scrap now, effectively doubling the recycled material we use; at the same time the business has grown, and the ouput has a global picture and is not just cans, its automotive too."

He said that cans were a fast moving material.

"Our trajectory has been quite rapid and has been backed up by a couple of billion dollars of capital investment.

"That's a trajectory we want to keep growing – we probably need to make more investment for this."

The Can-to-Can Recycling Plant in Warrington, Cheshire was opened in 1991 and employs over 190 people.

It is an essential part of Novelis’ European production system and has enough capacity to recycle every aluminium beverage can sold in the UK. That's equivalent to 117,000 tonnes per year or around nine billion cans.

The company annually recycles over 70 billion UBCs in its global operations, serving brands such as Coca-Cola, Crown, Ball Corporation, Ardagh Group, Can Pack and ABInBev.

The recycling of aluminium cans is a four-stage continuous process: shredding, decoating, melting, casting

Ball, one of its main clients, is pushing for aluminium cans to be used more in today's sustainability-focused packaging industry.