The aluminum tariff isn't coming. It's here.
As of June 2025, the U.S. tariff on imported aluminum, including imports from Canada, our primary supplier for beverage-grade material, doubled from 25% to 50%. Midwest aluminum prices are hovering around $4,800 per metric ton, an all-time high that surpasses even the worst of the COVID-era supply chain chaos.
For craft breweries that package in cans, this isn't background noise. It's a direct hit to your margins.
The Numbers Are Ugly
Craft brewers are reporting can price increases ranging from 8% to 30%, depending on their supplier relationships and order volumes. One brewery I spoke with saw a critical canning line spare part jump from $12,000 to $20,000 overnight. Parts budgets that used to be manageable are now running into six figures annually.
Major players like Molson Coors and AB InBev have publicly cited tariff-related metal price hikes as key contributors to their revised forecasts. They have the balance sheets to absorb it. Most craft breweries don't.
And there's no relief on the horizon. No exemption program for small producers. No phase-in period. The full 50% is in effect now.
What You Should Be Doing Right Now
This isn't a wait-and-see situation. Here's what I'm recommending to every canning client:
1. Run Updated Cost Models Today
If you haven't re-modeled your per-unit packaging costs since the tariff doubled, you're operating blind. Pull your current can pricing, factor in your supplier's latest quotes, and calculate the real per-case impact. Don't forget secondary costs: end panels, labels, shrink wrap, and spare parts for your canning line are all affected by aluminum and steel prices.
The number that matters is your fully-loaded cost per case, compared to where it was 12 months ago. For most breweries I'm working with, the delta is painful enough to force real decisions.
2. Consolidate Your SKU Lineup
This is the move most breweries resist and the one that usually has the biggest impact. Every unique SKU requires its own can art, its own production run, and its own minimum order. The more SKUs you run, the more you're paying for short runs and frequent changeovers.
If you're running 8 or 10 canned SKUs, ask yourself: which ones actually drive revenue, and which ones exist because you liked the recipe? Consolidating to your top 4 to 6 sellers lets you place larger orders per SKU, reducing per-unit cost and waste.
This is not about dumbing down your beer lineup. You can still brew whatever you want for taproom draft. But every SKU you put into a can needs to earn its packaging cost.
3. Evaluate Glass and Draft-Heavy Distribution
Glass bottles are not subject to the aluminum tariff, and glass pricing has remained relatively stable. For some breweries, especially those with strong on-premise accounts, shifting select products to glass 6-packs or 12-packs may make financial sense.
Similarly, if you have taproom or on-premise accounts that will take kegs, draft distribution avoids the packaging cost problem entirely. A keg of beer doesn't care what aluminum costs.
The tradeoff is consumer preference. Cans are what most craft beer drinkers expect on retail shelves. But at some point, the math has to work.
4. Explore Purchasing Co-Ops
Several regional brewer associations are forming or expanding purchasing cooperatives for cans and packaging materials. By pooling volume across multiple breweries, co-ops can negotiate better pricing and minimum order quantities that no single small brewery could access alone.
If your state or regional brewers guild isn't already organizing one, bring it up. If they are, join it. The collective bargaining power is real.
5. Rethink Your Pricing
This is the conversation nobody wants to have, but the math demands it. If your packaging costs have increased 15 to 30% and you haven't adjusted retail pricing, you're subsidizing the tariff out of your margin, margin that was already thin.
Consumers have shown willingness to pay premium prices for craft beer. A $1 per 4-pack increase is easier for your customer to absorb than a slow bleed that forces you to cut quality, reduce staff, or close.
Be transparent about it. "Our costs went up because of tariffs" is a reason people understand.
The Bigger Picture
The aluminum tariff is part of a broader margin squeeze hitting craft breweries from multiple directions: ingredient inflation (brewing ingredients market growing at 6%+ annually), labor costs, insurance, and declining overall craft beer volumes (down 4.3% in dollar sales for the 52 weeks ending December 2025).
Any one of these pressures is manageable. All of them together demand that breweries operate with more financial discipline than the industry has historically required.
The breweries that will survive this period are the ones running real cost models, making hard SKU decisions, and pricing their products to sustain the business, not the ones hoping tariffs will be rolled back before the damage is done.
What I'd Tell You Over a Beer
Stop waiting. Run the numbers, cut the SKUs that don't pay for themselves, explore every alternative packaging and purchasing option available, and raise your prices if the math says you need to. The tariff isn't a temporary disruption. It's the new cost of doing business.
The breweries that act now will have a cost advantage over those that don't. And in a market where closures are outpacing openings for the second straight year, that advantage matters more than ever.