Alcoa Corporation, Ball Corporation, and Unilever PLC are collaborating to enable the first use of breakthrough ELYSIS® carbon-free smelting technology in the production of aluminum for consumer personal and home care packaging.
“Through this collaboration with Ball and Unilever, we’re helping bring low-carbon aluminum into everyday products and demonstrating how innovation at the material level can deliver tangible sustainability benefits,” said Renato Bacchi, executive vice president and chief commercial officer at Alcoa. “We are proud to collaborate across the aluminum value chain to reduce carbon footprints and create real impact in people’s daily lives.”
ELYSIS is a technology partnership created through a joint venture between Alcoa and Rio Tinto, with support from Apple and the governments of Canada and Québec, to revolutionize aluminum production. The proprietary ELYSIS process eliminates all direct greenhouse gas emissions from the smelting process by using inert anode technology that produces oxygen instead of CO₂. The first industrial-scale deployment of ELYSIS technology is underway, with the goal of transforming the aluminum industry toward a decarbonized materials sector.
The collaboration between Alcoa, Ball, and Unilever marks the first time aluminum produced using ELYSIS carbon-free smelting technology is being used in consumer personal and home care packaging. The resulting aerosol can, made with 50% ELYSIS primary aluminum and 50% post-consumer recycled content, represents one of the lowest-carbon packaging solutions of its kind.
“This project combines higher recycled content and low-carbon primary aluminum — both key to decarbonize aluminum packaging and the aluminum sector at large,” notes Ramon Arratia, chief sustainability officer and vice president, Public Affairs at Ball Corporation. “This is both a packaging innovation and critical supply chain collaboration at work.”
The debut of ELYSIS aluminum in consumer personal and home care packaging marks a pivotal moment for the aluminum packaging and consumer goods industries. This initiative serves as a model of how industries can collaborate across the value chain to accelerate low-carbon innovation. It also demonstrates clear alignment with global decarbonization goals and with growing consumer demand for more sustainable products.