Shipments of cans for food and general line use in the US continued to decline in the first three months of the year as customers destocked their inventories.

The fall in the quarter of 7%, compared with the same period a year earlier, to a total of 6.02 billion units was slightly higher than in the final three months of 2023, according to the latest figures from the Washington, DC-based Can Manufacturers Institute (CMI). 

It means that a recovery in shipments to pre-pandemic levels is increasingly less likely. Total yearly shipments in 2023 (25.0bn) were less than in 2019 (25.4bn) after peaking in 2021 (28.7bn) as consumers ate more at home.

In the first quarter, the biggest loss in shipments was for cans used for vegetables, down 13.3% to 1.12bn units, followed by pet foods, down 8.9% to 2.43bn units and soups and miscellaneous products, down 5.2% to 1.09bn units.

Only the smaller categories made gains, such as cans used for fruit, which were up 6.3% to 94.6 million units, and cans used for coffee, which were up 12% to 19m units.

General line can shipments were also down, by 4.1% to 805m, although cans for aerosols fared better, being down just 1.8% at 610m units.

The figures underline recent reports from canmakers who say that sales of cans for food products have been struggling.

Canmakers also appear to be increasingly cautious about revealing their shipments of food and general line cans. Just six of the CMI’s 17 member companies reported – Can Corporation of America, Crown Holdings, Envases Ohio, Mauser Packaging, Silgan Containers and Sonoco Metal Packaging – with estimates made for the remainder.