Why is there a shortage of canning jars? Newell Brands owns Ball, Kerr

Apr 30, 2023

Last month I sent off my seed order for the coming season and began wondering how I was going to store my harvest from the garden. Was I going to be able to find canning lids this summer?

Canning jar lids have been the most long-term and perplexing shortage of the pandemic's past two years. Shortages began with toilet paper, which eventually got resolved, moved on to such odd scarcities as no fruitcake mix for Christmas 2020 (which mysteriously reappeared in mid-summer 2021), and even some types of Girl Scout cookies this winter.

But since the summer of 2020, when supposedly everybody in America was staying home, planting garden and canning produce, lids for canning jars have remained in short supply.

This was understandable during the first several months of the pandemic until the canning lid suppliers could catch up with the unprecedented demand. But the scarcity of canning jar lids didn't change throughout the pandemic. Consumers kept wondering why there there were so few lids available and why they became so expensive.

What consumers didn't know was that canning lids (around since 1884) and canning jars (around since 1858) are no longer being made by Ball and Kerr, the two big manufacturers of American canning supplies. A few years before the pandemic, these companies had sold out to a mega-corporation called Newell Brands.

Termed an American worldwide manufacturer, Newell Brands is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, and has 79 office locations in 20 countries, according to its official website. Over the past two decades, they've bought out over 100 well-known American brands, including Rubbermaid, Calphalon, Food Saver, Oster, Sunbeam, Crock Pot, Coleman, Parker, Sharpie and Elmer's Glue.

Since Ball and Kerr were just two more of multiple brands bought out by this company, consumer demands for any one product are not a priority for the mega-corporation. When the 2020 pandemic created a huge demand for canning supplies, Newell Brands decided it would not try to sell Ball and Kerr products at every store handling canning supplies as in the past, but only through online giant Amazon and select major chains such as Walmart and Ace Hardware stores.

As the blog stated, "We're dealing with a monopoly supplier, more or less."

Coinciding with the purchase of the brand names was the 2019 closing of the Muncie, Indiana, plant manufacturing Ball canning supplies for decades. Manufacturing would be moved to Columbus, Ohio, and packing and distribution to Fishers, Indiana, according to "Iconic Ball plant in Muncie to close in 2019" by Katie Cox in the July 10, 2018, WRTV-Indianapolis blog.

But none of this information was getting out to home canners in 2020, 2021 or even now in 2022. We instead found online excuses of a shortage of workers at the manufacturing plants (one of the few valid excuses for a slowdown in supply). We heard about a labor shortage in shipping and at the docks. (All name-brand lids are made in the United States, so what did docks have to do with this?) We heard there was an aluminum shortage, which has nothing to do with a stainless steel lid with a silicon gasket. My favorite was the early 2021 wood shortage causing a lack of wooden pallets on which to pack the boxes of canning lids.

But the reality of why the company is limiting its product to certain markets and charging whatever it wants is because it can.

Canning lids sold by themselves are scarce. There's lots of canning jars being sold with lids and rings, but anyone who cans has the jars and rings and those who need these items can find them for little or nothing at garage sales and auctions. The only retailers selling boxes of canning lids are Walmart and Ace Hardware stores, but not all of them. Prices are high, but not as high as going through online giant Amazon.

There's also an assortment of generic lids available but they vary widely in quality.

Another option is advised against by all the canning books but has been done for years by canners in remote areas is re-using canning lids. Some local canners say this has worked for them but it must be done carefully and with much checking of the jars during and after canning.

— This is the opinion of Times Writers Group member Lois Thielen, a dairy farmer who lives near Grey Eagle. Her column is published monthly.