How A Switch to Cans Can Signal A Plan For Growth

With a switch of distributors and going from bottles to cans, No Label Brewing is looking at 30 percent in growth for 2018. The Katy, Texas brewery which produced around 7,000 barrels has added a canning line and plans to roll out the canned lineup in April.

Jennifer Royo, a co-founder for the brewery and its Sales & Marketing Manager said the brewery located just west of Houston switched to cans because of cost effectiveness, the liquid is better in a can without light-struck issues and “that’s the way the market is going.”

Royo said that the brewery’s Operations Manager, John Anderson, has been overseeing QA checks.

“He is also sending cans to our canning company regularly to check for quality issues,” she noted.

The brewery is rolling out with seven year-round beers along with two seasonals.

“We are used to ordering labels from bottles and the lead time,” Royo said. “It’s actually easier with cans. The approval through stores is a little slow but [we are] working on it.”

In a previous story with Brewer Magazine, Santa Fe Brewing updated its canning line to help improve efficiency.

The New Mexico brewery’s old canning line would create roughly 12-15 cases of low fills and waste and about three cases of empty cans per shift for an average of 400 cases in a shift.

The new canning line has improved to just 5-24 cans of total loss on a 16-1,800 case run.

“[It’s] an enormous savings in package loss,” said owner Brian Lock.

The new line has so many functions that SFBC’s former bottling line did not have with regards to “package error,” performing at 5 parts per billion oxygen pick up as opposed to 105 parts per billion oxygen pick up with the old bottling line, which translates into 20 times fresher tasting beer for a much longer time.

The lighter weight of the cans means less expensive shipping and fewer shipments, reducing the brewery’s carbon footprint. They are also more portable and a better choice when recreating outdoors.

“The quality is much better with cans,” Lock noted, adding that he feels that customers have become to accept that quality beer comes from cans.