Leading canmaker urges aluminium producers to speak with one voice

Aluminium producers need to “come out of their silos” and develop a “coherent industry strategy”, the World Aluminium Conference heard this week.

As one of the few canmakers at the CRU’s conference in London, Ramon Arratia, chief sustainability officer at Ball Corporation, suggested in a panel discussion a number of tactics of how to demonstrate aluminium’s advantage over competing materials.

Aluminium producers – Alcoa, Emirates Global Aluminium, Hydro, Rio Tinto and Vedanta – acknowledged the current carbon footprint of the industry, and set out what they were doing to bring that down.

However, Arratia pointed out that despite the work of the industry, there needed to be agreement on methodology, data collection, and concerted efforts to win government support, such as subsidies and grants similar to that gained by the ‘green’ hydrogen and ‘green’ steel lobbies.

He said: “We are seeing really good things happening, but I think we are all telling our own story in a siloed way, and we do not have a coherent industry strategy.”

He called on companies to demonstrate the industry’s competitive advantages. For example, on the compaction rate, he said: “This is the biggest competitive advantage against glass. In a society that wants to reach circularity the cost of reverse logistics is what really matters, and compaction is the key metric.”

Another advantage was the huge variety of colours that can be applied on metal. “If you look into plastic, colour is a big thing… but green PET, blue PET is very difficult to recycle,” he said. “The effects that we’re putting onto the cans, the different colour tabs and ends, are all possibilities because by showing colour… I can differentiate my brand, especially in a world where everything is about social media.”

He also pointed out that aluminium was “the least harmful of the hard-to-abate sectors”, and he called on the sector to “continue hammering that message”.

He urged aluminium companies to “think about what the final end users are seeing and put the story into that context.”

The CRU hosted the World Aluminium Conference, along with International Aluminium and The Aluminium Stewardship Institute, in London on 14-16 May, with delegates from companies in Africa, Australasia, China, Europe, India, the Middle East and the US.