FEATURE
The Can- Do Spirit :
New Trends in Beer Consumption Open Up a Can of Opportunities
BY RICHARD ROMANO
For beer drinkers of a certain generation , the idea of beer in cans has traditionally been a fairly unpalatable one . The beer inevitably picked up the taste of the aluminium , and ' canned beer ' was often synonymous with ' bad beer '. However , this is decidedly 20thcentury thinking — and tasting .
The beer world turned upside down in 2002 , when Oskar Blues , a Colorado based craft brewery , decided to offer its signature brew , Dale ’ s Pale Ale , in cans rather than bottles . It was a hit . Advances in aluminium can development have eliminated taste problems , and for beer , cans have many quality advantages over bottles . UV radiation adversely affects the taste and longevity of beer , and cans are completely impervious to light , which still penetrates into dark-tinted bottles . Cans also offer better protection against exposure to oxygen , which contributes to skunking . They also chill faster than bottles .
Additionally , cans are more user friendly . They ’ re lighter , easier to carry , and far less breakable than bottles , especially for those who like to carry their favourite six pack along on camping , hiking or bicycling trips . They ’ re safer around pools , and many public pools and parks ban bottles because of potential breakage .
For breweries , cans are cheaper than bottles to buy as well as ship . Bottles also can break during filling , which means the line needs to be shut down , the glass cleaned up , and the area scoured for any stray shards . Cans eliminate this problem .
Then there is sustainability . You can argue whether glass is more sustainable than aluminium , but cans are easier and faster to recycle . So , brewers like cans ; consumers , especially Millennials , like cans ; and cans are better than they ’ ve ever been . Whither the bottle ?
' If you talk to brewers , they ’ d prefer to see beer served out of a can because it holds better and it doesn ’ t get skunked as easily ,' said Aaron Kilgore , Tennessee Regional Sales Manager for Resource Label Group , a Franklin , Tennesse based
label design and printing provider .
Canned beer sales have been growing dramatically . According to the Brewers Association ( www . brewersassociation . org ), IRI Group , a provider of ' consumer and shopper intelligence ', has found that cans account for 17.1 percent of the current scan sales volume for beer compared to 12.0 percent a year ago ( from year-to-date through mid-November 2016 ). ' A couple of caveats ,' cautioned Bart Watson , Chief Economist for the Brewers Association . ' First , IRI ‘ craft ’ covers numerous brands from the large brewers , so that percentage might be lower if you just looked at small and independent brewers . Second , that ' s just scan data , so it misses on-premise sales .' Draught sales are about 30 percent of craft production , and bottles 58 percent , so generally cans are closer to 12 percent of overall craft production .
Brewers Association ’ s benchmarks have seen cans grow about one to two percent a year within the craft segment . ' I ’ d expect that trend to continue in the medium term ,' said Watson . ' Whether we ’ ll see parity [ with bottles ] within craft remains to be seen . Cans are 55 percent of overall beer volume , but as a premium segment of the industry , craft may always have more bottles in the mix .'
As cans comprise a larger share of the market , they open up new opportunities — and challenges — for can decorators and printers .
Since Oskar Blues , the canning revolution spawned a whole new business entity : the mobile canning company . This is an itinerant business serving breweries that don ’ t have canning lines .
PG 36 JANUARY 2018 AFRICA PRINT JOURNAL www . AfricaPrint . com