March 4: This year’s World Cup is expected to provide a boost for beverage can shipments in Europe which last year fell by 2.4 percent to 51.5 billion, mostly as a result of a huge decline in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), according to Beverage Can Makers Europe, which represents the leading canmakers.
With the CIS economies struggling, one billion fewer cans were shipped to customers in 2008, representing a fall of 17.5 percent. Shipments in the CIS in 2008 had grown 14 percent to 5.7bn cans, most of which was for beer.
