Set to switch to aluminium

SINCE 2013, over $94-million in capital investments have been made by South African Breweries, Coca-Cola Southern Africa, Nampak Bevcan and Hulamin to convert from tinlined steel to aluminium beverage cans, to bring the region in line with other major markets such as the United States, which changed to aluminium cans in the 1970s and 1980s.

South Africa’s largest brewer and its main carbonated soft drink company have converted all of their filling lines in Gauteng province to aluminium cans. Their facilities in the rest of the country are set to follow, in order to complete the transition from steel to aluminium cans in just a few years.

To meet this customer demand, Nampak Bevcan commissioned South Africa’s first aluminium beverage can production line at its Springs plant, near Johannesburg, in mid-2013. “Two aluminium lines are already running, but once all three lines are operational we’ll be producing eight can sizes at maximum speeds of 3,000 cans/ minute, compared to 1,600 cans/minute on the old tinplate lines,’ says managing director Erik Smuts. “The full-scale plant will have a storage capacity of 240 million cans, and will be the biggest single aluminium can manufacturing facility in the world.”

Mr Smuts lists the environmental advantages of this conversion process as 10% less energy use in the manufacturing process because no external coating is required, which in turn has reduced the bank of spray machines and ovens needed to one, and conveying in the production line by two-thirds. “A melting point of 660°C, compared to 1,540°C for steel, to process and recycle aluminium plus a 60% weight reduction, which helps to minimise material and transportation costs, results in a significantly improved carbon footprint,” he states. “Thanks to system advances, we’re also achieving significantly enhanced print quality on aluminium cans at high speeds, compared to tinplate.”

Strategies to promote informal sector recycling

According to Collect-a-Can, the recycling rate for used steel/ tinplate beverage cans in southern Africa grew significantly from 18% in 1993 to 72% in 2013. The organisation, which has a presence in South Africa; Namibia; Mozambique and Botswana, estimates that annually more than $1.8-million is paid to approximately 100 000 collectors.

Mr Smuts believes that the region’s conversion to aluminium will ultimately help to increase recycling volumes because aluminium beverage cans are infinitely recyclable without loss of strength or quality, and offer collectors a rate of 10 cents per can instead of 3 cents for a steel/tinplate can. “This makes aluminium recovery and recycling an economically viable option for can collectors in the informal sector. It’s estimated that between $9.5-million and $19-million a year will flow into the scrap metals and recycling industry, allowing an additional 2,000 to 3,000 people to earn a living or to supplement low incomes,” he explains.

Richard Jacob, chief executive of Hulamin, the sole South African company capable of manufacturing the aluminium sheet that Nampak requires, explains that Hulamin has signed a contract to supply 28,000 tons of coil until 2015 to the Springs lines. The balance of the raw material for Nampak Bevcan’s new cans will come from Brazilian supplier, Novelis. Mr Jacob is, however, confident that Hulamin can displace Novelis in the next contract because its product trialled very well after commissioning.

At the moment, 95% of Hulamin’s aluminium comes in the form of virgin ingots and slabs from BHP Billiton’s Bayside and Hillside smelters in Richards Bay, KwaZulu-Natal. Because it takes about 20 times more energy to convert mined bauxite into aluminium than it does to remelt a used can, “it’s in all of our interests to have as big a rate of recycling as possible,” says Mr Jacob.

The company’s goal of sourcing 25% of metal units from recycling by 2018 has resulted in a $28.3-million investment in a stateof- the-art remelt facility to handle used aluminium cans – including scrap storage, sorting, cleaning and melting – to increase Hulamin’s onsite slab self-sufficiency to 200,000 tons annually.

Mr Jacobs explains that this investment, which is expected to startup in the second quarter of 2015, will also help the company to reach its ultimate target for cans not recycled to be less than 15%.

“Our investment mirrors the growth of aluminium beverage cans in South Africa, Angola and Nigeria – plus we expect the East African market to follow conversion from steel/tinplate to aluminium cans in the short term,” he adds.

A recycling model to emulate?

The Brazilian market, which leads global can recycling with a recovery rate of 97.9%, offers southern Africa a good model of what can be achieved. Carlos Morais, recycling co-ordinator of the Brazilian Aluminum Association, explains that no cans go to landfill and that the collectors are the most important pillar for this process.

“Brazil’s collectors benefit from an efficient and transparent market in which aluminium coil supplier, Novelis publicly sets the price it will pay both informal collectors and dealers at 76-84% of the spot price on the London Metal Exchange. Scrap dealers know they must keep their margins lean to compete for the cans from collectors,” explains Mr Morais.

According to a report in the Mail & Guardian newspaper, Brazilian recyclers receive the equivalent of $1.32/kg for used cans, more than double the top end of the range paid (at the beginning of the year), by scrap dealers in Johannesburg and Collect-a-Can. So plans to streamline aluminium can recycling in South Africa for more of the metal’s value to pass through to collectors will be welcomed.