The multi-line plant will be AMP’s fourth in the South American country and will be co-located with the first glass production facility to be built in Brazil by its major shareholder, Ardagh Group.
“Since the group’s entry into the Brazilian beverage can market in 2016, we have consistently invested to grow our business,” said Ardagh group chief executive Paul Coulson. ”Following completion of these two investments in Minas Gerais, Ardagh will provide sustainable metal and glass packaging under long-term contracts to our customers in Europe, North America and Brazil.”
The Juiz de Fora canmaking plant will complement AMP’s facilities in Jacareí, São Paulo; Alagoinhas, in the north-east state of Bahia; and Manaus, in the north-west state of Amazonas.
The state of Minas Gerais has become a manufacturing hub for canmakers with its proximity to São Paulo state and easy transport links to the rest of the country.
Crown Packaging is constructing its sixth Brazilian plant in Uberaba.The two-line manufacturing site is forecast to produce 2.4 billion cans annually when fully operational and will raise the US canmaker’s annual production capacity in Brazil to 13.3 billion cans.
Ball Corporation has three facilities in the state. It most recently invested more than BRL500 million (US$104m) in a two-line plant in Frutal, which has the capacity to make up to 2 billion units per year.
At the end of 2020, Brazilian brewer Ambev became the first South American drinks maker to open its own canmaking site when it built a plant near its Sete Lagoas brewery. Ambev, which is part of the Anheuser-Busch InBev Group, invested US$175 million in two high-speed D&I can body lines and an end-making facility with the capacity to produce 1.5 billion aluminium cans and ends each year.
Despite a dip in the first quarter of 2022, demand for beverage cans is booming in Brazil, which is the third-largest national market after the US and China. Beverage can shipments rose by more than a fifth in the first six months of 2021 compared with the same period a year earlier when volumes were up 7.3 per cent, according to the country’s trade organisation, Abralatas.
Brazil’s population has also helped it become the world’s champion recycler. In 2021, the country scored a 98.7 per cent recycling rate when 33 billion beverage cans were recycled.
Luxembourg-based Ardagh Group has a 81.85 per cent share in AMP which was formed from a merger of its beverage can manufacturing assets and the US-based special purpose acquisition company Gores Holdings V in August.