After three months of conflict, the US and Iran have agreed on a framework to end the war, with a formal signing taking place June 17 and the Strait of Hormuz expected to reopen afterward. Crude oil has fallen to a three-month low, and Citi has cut its Brent forecasts to $75 and $70 a barrel for the third and fourth quarters. If you run a beverage brand, the natural assumption with the war ending and energy falling, is that cans should get cheaper.
That assumption is a headline trap. The relief in the headlines is a crude-oil story, and even there it is slow. GasBuddy analysts expect US pump prices may not return to pre-war levels until 2027. The metal in cans is in a completely separate market with its own set of cost impacts.
The evidence is in the price action itself. As ceasefire optimism built, LME aluminum has eased about 4% over the past month to roughly $3,423 on June 17 - still about 34% higher than a year ago and near a four-year high. More importantly, the delivered cost of metal to a US can buyer has barely moved, because the largest part of the recent increase came from the US Midwest Premium (MWP), not the exchange price.
Do not budget for an aluminum can price cut this quarter on the strength of ceasefire and oil headlines. The smelter outages during the Iran War, a Chinese production cap, and the US tariff structure are the forces that are pushing can costs up in 2026, none of which are resolved through a peace deal. Plan from where the market actually is, not where the oil ticker suggests it should be.
As of mid-June 2026, operators should not budget for relief. Can costs will in Q3 will remain flat or continue to increase by low-single-digits.
That expectation is anchored to the independent analyst consensus, not to any single supplier's forecast. JP Morgan projects a 1.9-million-tonne global aluminum deficit in 2026; a common middle-path read across analysts sees prices sustained above roughly $3,600 to $3,800 per tonne through the second half of the year; and Bank of America has floated an LME target above $4,000 per tonne for Q4 (all detailed in the analyst section below). On the delivered side, the US Midwest Premium that drove most of 2026's increase is holding near record levels. Taken together, these point to continued upward pressure on can costs into Q3.
The honest counterweight is the Premium is running above what some analysts consider fair value, so a partial pullback from its peak is possible. However, return to pre-2026 cost levels is not in the consensus. Plan for elevated costs, and treat any moderation as upside rather than the base case.
Mid-June is the window to set expectations before Q3 so cost increases are planned instead of a margin surprise. Build a continued modest increase into your Q3 cost assumptions, revisit your shelf and distributor pricing against it now rather than in August, and use the Q3 Can Cost Planner further down to size the impact for your own volume.
The defining event of 2026 was the physical destruction of smelting capacity. On March 28, 2026, Iranian strikes hit two of the world's largest smelters: Emirates Global Aluminium's (EGA) plant in the UAE and Aluminium Bahrain's Alba smelter. An estimated 2–3% of global production is now offline under force majeure, representing approximately 1.13 to 1.79 million tonnes of 2026 production at risk. Alcoa's own SEC filings put regional curtailments at more than 2.5 million tonnes.
An aluminum smelter is not a factory you switch back on. The strikes caused what the industry calls "frozen pots", where the molten aluminum and electrolyte inside the cells solidify when power is lost. That hardened metal must be physically broken out before the cells can be rebuilt, re-energized, and brought back to operating temperature. Analysts estimate EGA needs roughly 12 months to recover and Alba 6-9 months. A signed treaty does not un-freeze a potline.
For two decades, when supply tightened anywhere in the world, China opened the taps as the largest reserve in the world. That reserve valve has closed. China hit its self-imposed 45-million-tonne annual production cap in 2025, and output is expected to stall even though the country still accounts for roughly 61% of global primary aluminum. The Gulf accounts for 9-10% of global aluminum supply, so when that region is disrupted, there is no longer Chinese supply to compensate. The global market moved from an expected modest surplus to a genuine deficit.
The obvious question is, if supply is short and prices are high, isn't new capacity coming? Older smelters are being turned back on, and that is the longer-term relief valve. But the restarts are smaller, slower, and more power-constrained than the headlines suggest, and they are partly cancelled out by fresh closures.
Alcoa San Ciprian (Spain): About 228,000 tonnes. Alcoa announced the safe completion of the restart in April 2026, after roughly 4.5 years offline.
Century Hawesville and Mount Holly (United States): Hawesville (150,000 tonnes) is restarting with a 90-120 day potline process; Mount Holly is adding roughly 50,000 tonnes after securing power through 2031.
Aluminium Dunkerque (France): Curtailed capacity already brought back with government support.
Canada and beyond: Rio Tinto is exploring restarting idled capacity at Tiwai Point in New Zealand and is building a $1.5 billion AP60 expansion in Quebec (about 160,000 tonnes); a new 500,000-tonne smelter in Indonesia is expected to begin by year-end.
Of roughly 1.4 million tonnes of European capacity curtailed since 2021, only about 60,000 tonnes have fully restarted. In the US, only four primary smelters still operate, down from more than 30 in 1980, and the first new US smelter since 1980 is not expected to produce metal until the end of the decade and remains stalled pending a power deal.
The restarts are also being offset. South32's 560,000-tonne Mozal smelter in Mozambique faces shutdown over power economics, and Iceland's Grundartangi has about two-thirds of its capacity idled after a 2025 potline failure. Even Alcoa, with San Ciprian back online, generates just 2.4 to 2.6 million tonnes of 2026 production. Net the restarts against the closures and the war losses, and the capacity genuinely coming back is roughly a tenth of what the Gulf alone took offline.
Relief is real, it has names and locations, and it is already underway. But it arrives in quarters and years, not in your next pricing cycle. Treat new and restarted capacity as a 2027-and-beyond easing of the market.
Even if every geopolitical risk vanished tomorrow, the delivered cost of aluminum in the US would stay elevated because a large part of it is policy, not war. Section 232 tariff shows up in the US Midwest Premium, the surcharge added to the London base price for delivered US metal. The premium broke above $1.00/lb for the first time in history in January 2026 and has since climbed to a record near $1.18/lb.
This is the mechanism that breaks the oil-ceasefire intuition. The LME price can soften on peace headlines while the delivered cost holds, because the premium and the tariff behind it are structural.
The strongest reason to plan for sustained costs rather than a quick reversal is that the credible, independent analysts are aligned and bullish. These are public calls from the firms that move the aluminum market.
JP Morgan: Projects a 1.9-million-tonne global primary aluminum deficit in 2026, driven by an estimated 2.4-million-tonne Middle East supply disruption.
Wood Mackenzie: Its more severe scenario reaches a deficit of up to 4 million tonnes if disruptions persist.
TD Securities: Also projects roughly a 1.9-million-tonne deficit and expects LME prices and US Midwest premiums to stay elevated.
Bank of America: Has floated an LME aluminum target above $4,000 per tonne for Q4 2026.
Alcoa (SEC filings): Corroborates the scale firsthand with more than 2.5 million tonnes of regional capacity curtailed, and full-year 2026 production guidance of just 2.4 to 2.6 million tonnes.
A read across these sources sees the global deficit settling in the 1.5 to 2.5 million tonne range, with prices sustained above roughly $3,600 to $3,800 per tonne through the second half of 2026 and cost pressure persisting into 2027.
Operators tell us they use The Aluminum Report to anticipate their own shelf prices before the cost lands. Here is how to turn the market picture above into a number you can plan around.
An aluminum can price increase in the low single digits is a few cents per case on most SKUs. This is small in isolation, but meaningful at volume and against the thin margins typical in craft. The goal is not to react to a percentage; it is to know your exposure in dollars, then decide deliberately whether to absorb it, pass it through, or split it. Use the planner below to size your impact.
Set your forecasted Q3 volume, your current landed cost per can, and the increase you want to model. The estimate updates live. All inputs are yours — nothing here is assumed for you.
Enter your actual figure — the default is illustrative only.
Default reflects a low-single-digit Q3 move. Adjust to your quote.
When smelter outages, a Chinese production cap, and US tariffs are all moving against you at once, the value of a can supplier with real market intelligence and proactive quarterly planning shows up directly on your P&L.
Cask Global Canning Solutions is a 25+ year Distribution Partner of Ball Corporation. We supply aluminum cans and lids to craft beverage businesses in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom, with dedicated account management, quarterly cost visibility, and proactive supply-chain support built to help you plan pricing and protect margin in a market like this one.
Our team is here to help you build a smarter aluminum can supply program and a clear pricing strategy around it.
JP Morgan and Wood Mackenzie 2026 aluminum deficit forecasts; TD Securities and Bank of America aluminum price outlooks; Alcoa Corporation SEC filings (Q1 2026 8-K and 10-Q); Kpler (Gulf smelter strike impact); ING (smelter restarts and deficit); USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries (Section 232 tariffs and US capacity); London Metal Exchange and Trading Economics (LME aluminum); MetalMiner (Midwest Premium and combined basis); Discovery Alert and Residual Research (restart timelines and the "frozen pots" analysis); Canary Media (US smelter and power constraints). Market figures are time-sensitive and reflect data available as of mid-June 2026.