Coca-Cola may have to sell more drinks in plastic bottles in the US if President Donald Trump’s tariffs end up making aluminium cans more expensive, the company’s chief executive, James Quincey, said in a call with investors.
It comes after Trump ordered a 25% import tax on all steel and aluminium entering the US, which could end up driving up the price of canned food and drink items in the country.
In December, the beverage giant scaled down its sustainability target of using 50% recycled materials in its packaging by 2030, to using 35% to 40% by 2035.
Environmental groups have labelled Coca-Cola as the “top global plastic polluter” for six consecutive years.
“If one package suffers some increase in input costs, we continue to have other packaging offerings that will allow us to compete in the affordability space,” Quincey said.
“For example, if aluminium cans become more expensive, we can put more emphasis on PET [plastic] bottles”.
The Coca-Cola boss also sought to minimise the impact of the tariffs on his business saying packaging is only a relatively small component of his company’s costs.
In recent years, Coca-Cola had been selling more products in aluminium containers as part of its marketing and sustainability strategies.
Despite being generally more expensive, aluminium cans are also a lot more recyclable than plastic bottles over time.
The US imports almost half of the aluminium it uses, according to the United States Geological Survey, so a 25% tariff on all imports is likely to cause cans to become even more costly.
After Trump first ordered tariffs on steel in 2018, many can-makers won “exclusions” from those import taxes.
But this time, Trump has said there will be no exemptions from the rules either for individual products or for particular countries.
In a separate move that is likely to contribute to plastic pollution, Trump signed an executive order earlier this week ending a US government effort to replace plastic straws with paper.
The order reversed a measure signed by former President Joe Biden, who had called plastic pollution a “crisis”.
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