The COVID-19 pandemic driven shutdown of on-premise service at bars and restaurants led to a big but expected cut in draft packaging last year, according to the 2020 “Package Mix Report” shared by the Beer Institute and compiled by the National beer Wholesalers Association’s Department of Industry Affairs.
The report — which pulls data from the U.S. Department of Commerce, Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB), Can Manufacturers Institute and Glass Packaging Institute — found that draft packaging declined 43.7% in 2020, with a decline of 58.94% from Q1 to Q2 2020, at the outset of the pandemic’s shutdowns and stay-at-home orders.
Brewers shifted their packaging to largely aluminum cans, with both domestic and imports, increasing 10.7%; domestic cans increased 11.4%.
However, the shift to can packaging has led to a years-long can shortage. Last October, Ball Corporation, the leading U.S. manufacturer of metal packaging for beverages, reported a 10 billion can shortage in the U.S. in 2020. A report by financial services firm Credit Suisse that same month estimated that the North American can industry is sold out for 24 to 36 months, with the supply chain likely not “catching up to real demand until 2025-26.”
Even as brewers turned to alternative packaging forms, they didn’t switch to glass. Glass bottles declined 4.4% overall in 2020, although imports in glass bottles increased 4.2%.
The overall package mix in 2020 was 27.7% bottles (56.7 million), 66.5% cans (136.1 million) and 5.8% draft (11.9 million).
Compare that to 2019: 29.2% bottles (59.37 million), 60.4% cans (122.9 million) and 10.4% draft (21.19 million).
Prior to the pandemic, draft held a steady 10% share of the package mix from 2011 through 2019. Cans’ share of the packaging mix has grown from 52.8% in 2010, to 60.4% in 2019. Meanwhile, glass bottles’ share of the packaging mix has declined from 37.4% in 2010 to 29.2% in 2019.
Total production increased 0.6%, to 204.8 million barrels, in 2020, the industry’s largest output since 2017.