Budweiser APAC launches China’s “lightest aluminum can” for beer

03 Nov 2023 --- The Budweiser Brewing Company APAC has delivered a circular packaging forum for its value chain partners at Putian Brewery, Fujian Province, China. The forum reinforces Bud APAC’s circular packaging approach of the “reduce-reuse-recycle-recover” concept for the low-carbon transition.

During the forum, Bud APAC launched its lightest aluminum can for beer in China, with its 330  mL can weighing 9.57g, 4% lighter than the industry average. The average carbon footprint per can is 185 g, nearly 100 g more lightweight than the 2017 baseline. 

Bud APAC is also addressing the challenges of aluminum can same-grade recycling by introducing Can-to-Can recycling, a closed-loop solution for used beverage cans, capitalizing on technological innovation and collaboration with industry partners.

“As the largest brewer in the region, we are fully committed to enhancing our efforts in promoting circularity to mitigate our impact on the climate and environment while empowering our value chain partners to reduce their carbon emissions,” says Jan Clysner, vice president of Sustainability & Procurement of Bud APAC.

Manufacturing lighter aluminum
The forum explores best practices of recycling and packaging to tackle the challenges of current resource scarcity, improve the circularity of packaging materials and eliminate waste, with the support from the Putian local government, brewing and environmental sustainability experts and industry associations.

The forum promotes innovative solutions for the Chinese beer sector, specifically on aluminum cans and glass.

Bud APAC showcased its lightest beer can for the China market.Bud APAC’s aluminum packaging has helped to reduce more than 40,000 metric tons of carbon emission, compared to the 2017 baseline, through continuous efforts, with carbon emission per can down by over 30%.

Bud APAC has also actively fostered carbon reduction transformation among its upstream partners through various initiatives — including encouraging aluminum can suppliers to utilize solar energy in production, recycle and reuse waste heat and adopt the Regenerative Thermal Oxidizer system — to manufacture environmentally friendly and energy-efficient green aluminum cans.

For circular packaging, the pillars of the company’s 2025 Sustainability Goals and 2040 Net Zero Ambition are to develop unique solutions, packaging design and post-consumer recovery and public education and awareness building.

“Only through working together can we realize our ambition of achieving net zero across our value chain by 2040,” explains Clysner.

Previous years’ packaging
Some highlights of the company’s circular packaging achievements in 2022 include 63.2% of Bud APAC’s total packaging volume made in returnable packaging or made from a majority of recycled content, and 51.3% of its primary packaging was made of recycled content.

In the same year, over 80% of the returnable bottles were collected and refilled with beer after sanitization across APAC. The company reduced the use of packaging materials by 8,473 metric tons, including bottles, cans and other packaging materials.

By Sabine Waldeck