While the world continues to navigate COVID-19 realities, can manufacturers are striving to remain focused, adaptable, and competitive as they scramble to increase production capacity to meet skyrocketing demand. As the year comes to a close, the Acumence team explores what 2021 can making trends are beginning to emerge.

2021 Can Making Trends

Unprecedented demand is making it difficult for many to keep up. Why the huge consumer appetite for cans? While some consumer budgets have been restricted, many are still prioritizing stockpiling amid the uncertainty.

For manufacturers, bottlenecks of any sort are never a welcome occurrence, but as the saying goes… necessity is the mother of invention.

During 2020, we’ve watched many can manufacturers transform their organizations quickly and decisively. The pandemic has accelerated many trends that were already appearing in 2019 and early 2020.  While still operating amid great uncertainty, can makers are pivoting and responding accordingly through strategic initiatives, technology implementation, and capital investments.

We’re seeing four distinct 2021 can making trends:

• Adding more plants
• Increasing number of production lines
• Implementing technology
• And squeezing additional production out of existing lines

All four are easier said than done. Growing seamlessly requires complete plant-wide and even enterprise-wide visibility, rather than separate silos of data. A manufacturing business intelligence solution with a contextual view of an entire enterprise is a must to increase yields, efficiency, and fuel effective decision-making.

Looking back, much of what Acumence wrote about in our Top Can Making Trends of 2020 blog still stands.

Can manufacturers are servicing an increasing variety of customers. Conventional lines are becoming a thing of the past, and lines that produce smaller batches are becoming more practical. Manufacturing facilities must be able to changeover more frequently and quickly.

Additionally, plant-wide strategies are becoming increasingly important, even with the increase of connected machines. As machine vendors develop their own distinct IoT solutions, efficient data collection can become more and more difficult.