Executive Summary:
After a difficult 2023, the North American cansheet market seems to have normalized. US production and imports of cansheet have bounced back to levels that allow the market to grow on an orderly fashion and at par with its underlying trend. Indeed, US cansheet production has increased… % y/y ytd despite US mill outages earlier this year (Constellium, Arconic, and Kaiser). Moreover, US cansheet imports have increased… % y/y ytd amid increased flows from Novelis mills in South Korea and Brazil. Although we see a softer Q4 , we see regional cansheet demand growing in 2024 and 2025 at par with its underlying growth rate of around… % per year. The tripling of Section 301 duties to… % will vanish Chinese cansheet from the US market. However, tight scrap spreads are compressing US cansheet margins.