Case Study: Why Can’t Canada Make Cans?

Canada is the world’s fourth-largest producer of primary aluminum.

This actually isn’t an obvious niche for us; we don’t mine any of the ore that is used to make aluminum. Nevertheless, Canada imports bauxite ore and alumina — mostly from Brazil — and we produce 3.3 million tonnes each year across ten aluminum smelters — nine located in Quebec and one in British Columbia. And as it turns out, our approach to the aluminum supply chain is strikingly similar to how we treat other natural resources that we pull directly from our land.

Our production capacity enabled Canada to export $10.4 billion worth of raw aluminum in 2025. About 81% of this aluminum goes to the United States (down from 92.9% in 2024). But notably, some of that aluminum finds its way back to Canada in the form of aluminum cans. To be precise, we imported $804 million worth of aluminum cans in 2025.

Why is it that Canada produces so much raw aluminum for export, only to buy back hundreds of millions worth of aluminum, in the form of cans? Isn’t this a huge missed opportunity for value-added manufacturing?

The explanation lies in how aluminum cans are manufactured, and Canada’s lack of investment in the capacity to further refine aluminum at home.

Aluminum cans are punched out of aluminum can sheet—huge coils of flattened aluminum— produced by rolling mills in a process called “aluminum rolling”. Aluminum rolling entails passing prepared aluminum stock through a series of roller mills that apply pressure to the top and bottom of the stock until it reaches the desired thickness.

Aluminum rolling is essential for the production of cans, and also a key step in unlocking the value of further aluminum processing in other sectors. Rolled aluminum has applications in engineering, aerospace, railway, roadway and electrical industries.

Yet Canada has exactly zero active aluminum rolling mills. Thanks to this crucial missing puzzle piece, Canada’s beer, cider and canned beverage industries are entirely dependent on US processing capacity for aluminum cans, raising input costs as aluminum moves back and forth over the border.

Canada may currently have no active aluminum rolling mills, but in 1938 Québec was home to a rolling mill owned by International Foil Limited. The mill produced rolled aluminium for cigarette packaging—aluminum beverage cans had yet to enter the market. After a long history, including temporary reappropriations for wartime production and a series of acquisitions, the rolling mill was ultimately shut down in 2008. No rolling mill has taken its place since then and Canada’s aluminum rolling capacity remains essentially nonexistent.

The United States beat Canada in initially building rolling mills—United Aluminum started rolling aluminum in 1915 and is the second oldest aluminum roller in the U.S.—and has managed to maintain its capacity, operating two of the top five aluminum rolling mills globally. United Aluminum even started out as a smelter but then abandoned its smelting and scrap operations once the rolling operation proved to be so profitable, which perhaps exemplifies the broader shift away from the production of primary aluminum in the US. Meanwhile, Canada has become dependent on the superior aluminum rolling capacity of the U.S.

Admittedly, Canada does have some aluminum can manufacturers, but without rolling mills, these manufacturers must still rely on imported aluminum can sheet and can lids. Furthermore, Canada’s manufacturers do not manufacture the 473 ml can format, also known affectionately as a “tallboy” and popular among Canada’s craft brewers. Very weird, especially given the additional cost of producing a tallboy can compared to a regular 355ml can is negligible.

Under ideal trade conditions, the interdependencies between Canada and the U.S. in the aluminum market do not seem like a glaring problem. Unfortunately, Trump’s 50% tariffs on Canadian aluminum are far from ideal trade conditions. These tariffs are hitting Canada’s beer, cider and beverage industries especially hard. Aluminum products are subjected to double tariffs because the supply chain involves multiple border crossings before the cans hit the shelves. For breweries, the economic impact is estimated to be $330 million a year.

To address these dependencies, breweries have called on Canada to address interprovincial trade barriers and the Canadian Beverage Association, representing Canada’s non-alcoholic beverage industry, urged the government to exclude U.S. aluminum can sheet, cans and lids from tariff countermeasures. A switch to glass bottles for beer—for example, repopularizing “stubbies” as the beer vessel of choice—has also been suggested as a method for Canada to wean itself off American aluminum.

Yet a complete transition off of aluminum cans seems logistically complicated and likely to encounter resistance. There are good reasons why aluminum is a popular material: consumer demand, overall quality of the beer and environmental benefits. So despite some viable alternatives, without the linchpin of rolling mills to produce aluminum can sheet, Canada’s aluminum supply chain and the industries that depend on it will remain highly vulnerable.

The long-term game plan emerges from there: begin the process of disentangling Canada from foreign processing, and the associated vulnerabilities, by building at-home rolling mills. This is an idea that Canadian consumers have raised on social media. And the first steps might already be underway in Quebec, with a $11 million government-funded project to construct a rolling mill prototype. There is hope that this project will attract further investments and resurrect Quebec’s aluminum rolling industry, with promises of strategic advantages and economic development.

Aluminum can manufacturing is only one example of an industry where we can move up the value chain to increase our productivity and economic resilience. We have so far been content with primary production capacity, while letting others claim the higher value-add activities, but Canada should be pursuing these opportunities wherever we can find them.

While it may not seem as cool as crushing a tall boy with your friends in the summer, building aluminum rolling capacity can help Canada meet its own domestic demand for aluminum products. It is just one example of how Canada can inject more value into its export supply chains through value-add processing.