Plastic overtakes metal in beverage closures

Plastic beverage caps and closures narrowly overtook their metal counterparts in 2013, gaining the largest share of the global market for beverage closures. In 2007, metal closures held 51% of the market; in 2013, metal closures held 48% of the market, with plastic closures holding 49%, a new report from Canadean shows.

The growth in plastic closures is primarily motivated by a shift towards more innovative, lightweight, cost-saving packaging. Canadean predicts that the gap between plastic and metal closures will continue to widen, with plastic closures expected to hold 52% of the market by 2017.

Lightweight packaging in general has been a strong trend in the beverage industry as suppliers strive to develop products to satisfy both environmental and cost concerns.

“Plastics closures crossed a critical threshold last year in overtaking the share of their metal counterparts across all CPG end markets,” said Dominic Cakebread, Director of Packaging Services at Canadean.

According to Cakebread, the recent growth of plastic closures has been driven partly by the associated gain in share of plastics containers and partly by further advances in closure design, materials and systems.

“These have been focusing on reducing polymer weight and cost, while maintaining or improving technical performance and convenience features. It is the greater flexibility of plastics to adapt to the changing demands of the closure market that give them their ongoing advantage.”

This information is based on findings from the Canadean report ‘Innovation in Caps and Closures’, which was published in November 2013.