CAPITAL: The Voice of Business Issue 1, 2015 | Page 39

n enters a new era
B
everage cans are such a part
of our culture that we scarcely
give them a thought. Each of
us has held one in our hand at
various times in our lives: a soft drink at
a sports event, a beer at a braai, or when
enjoying welcome cold refreshment on
a hot summer’s day.
And when we remember iconic
drinks from the past, it is often by the
distinctive cans they came in. Drinks
like Groovy, the first soft drink in South
Africa to be canned in the 1970s; or Mello Yello, after which the yellow police
vans of the 1980s came to be known in
townships. Fresca, with its garish yellow-and-blue can, might have been a
better candidate for the nickname, but
its debut was later, in a free South Africa, and it became a firm favourite of
a new generation in the mid-90s. And
then, of course, there’s the iconic Coke,
whose red-and-white can is instantly
recognised all over the world, regardless of culture.
If you’ve been around long enough,
you’ll remember the changes that
beverage cans have been through over
the decades. Old-timers will remember
the all-steel versions, with pull tabs that
came right off the can, and which you
could further disassemble and then use
the tab for launching the ring across a
room, Frisbee-style (yes, young-uns,
those were the days...). Perhaps you
remember when obvious seams down
the sides of “tins” disappeared; and
chances are you didn’t even notice
when can tops became aluminium and
shrank in diameter.
Now we are about to enter a new era
of the beverage can, as the container

of our favourite cold drink becomes allaluminium. It’s a change in which Pietermaritzburg company Hulamin will be
playing a big part.
In 2012, Hulamin and Nampak Bevcan
signed a game-changing agreement
that will see Hulamin manufacturing
material for the production of allaluminium beverage cans for the local
market. Brands like Coke, Fanta, Castle,
Hansa and Black Label are now being
packaged in aluminium instead of the
tin-coated steel in which they have
been distributed, and by the end of
this year more than half of the cans in
circulation in Gauteng and surrounding
provinces will be all-aluminium.
The move has a number of benefits
for the industry: aluminium cans are
lighter than the steel cans in use now;
they are cheaper to manufacture
than steel ones; they have a clean
appearance and don’t rust like steel;
and aluminium use for beverage cans
is more environmentally friendly than
using steel.
This last point presents an
opportunity that Hulamin has seized.
The company is now actively seeking
out used aluminium beverage cans
(UBCs) for recycling at a new recycling
plant it is building at its Camps Drift site
in Pietermaritzburg.
The project, named Inkanyezi
— which means “star” in isiZulu —
represents a capex of around R300
million by Hulamin. It includes a
new state-of-the-art melting furnace
supplied by Hertwich, a UBC shredding
and cleaning line, liquid-metal transfer
facilities, and scrap storage facilities. The
twin-chamber furnace is touted as the

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