Daniel William Fisher
President and Director at Ball
Thanks, John. I echo your thanks to our employees, customers and suppliers. We strive to keep our teams safe. And to everyone listening, we strongly encourage vaccination and boosters. As John mentioned, the global operations, commercial and procurement teams are managing accelerated growth, large-scale capacity additions, while navigating unprecedented supply chain disruptions. These impacts are largely outside of Ball's control and includes steep supplier cost pass-throughs beyond normal levels. Ultimately, the compounding effect of labor and trucking shortages outside of Ball had impacted our operational efficiencies, customers' production and filling operations as well as retailers' efficiency stocking store shelves, the degree of which varies greatly by region. Given the scale of cost being passed on to us and, as John mentioned earlier, we are beginning conversations towards implementing the additional commercial cost recovery program. Our aerospace and aluminum packaging businesses delivered a tremendous amount of value amid current conditions. Third quarter single-digit volume growth in North America and EMEA aluminum beverage packaging was offset by double-digit volume declines in South America due to tough year-over-year comps of 30% growth in third quarter 2020, largely due to the timing effects of COVID in South America versus third quarter 2019 demand. Our retail marketing investments in cups continues, and supports additional food service launches at stadiums and venues continues across the U.S.
The Ball aluminum cup will begin an initial rollout at a major retailer during the fourth quarter and a new contract with a leading global food service and hospitality company that will further broaden the cups' presence at stadiums and venues. Our aerospace team brought online new infrastructure investments on time and on budget and supported the successful launch of OLI aboard the Landsat nine spacecraft, complementing our legacy of value-added Earth imaging science. Demand for aluminum beverage cans continues to outstrip supply around the globe. We remain on track to exit 2021 with an additional 12 billion units of new installed capacity. We also recently announced additional domestic projects, all of which underscore our Investor Day commentary. To all the teams listening, I know it's been challenging to keep up with the growth, keep your heads held high and focus on basic blocking and tackling. We have the contracts, we have the raw materials, we have the equipment and we have each other. We also continue to make significant progress in operationalizing and commercializing sustainability and driving our D&I goals. Our operations in South America and North America are on track to achieve ASI certification by year-end 2021. We launched Brazil's first Circular Economy Lab in October, and we continue to finalize our steps to achieve to become carbon neutral prior to 2050 after publicly stating our intent to achieve such goal. As we discussed throughout 2021, growth isn't always linear. Given our year-to-date global beverage shipment growth of 7% and recent supply chain dynamics, we are on course to achieve high single-digit global volume growth and global specialty mix in excess of 50% for full year 2021. We continue to see annual growth rates in excess of 6% for the foreseeable future.
Ball is well positioned to capture growth given our timely execution on new capacity additions and our established scale and innovation in the world's largest can regions. Now a few brief comments on each region. In North America beverage, third quarter ship volumes were up 1% versus 2020 and up 7.4% versus 2019. During the quarter, earnings were down as volume growth was offset by the combined effect of inflationary cost increases from suppliers above current cost recovery provisions, project start-up costs and operational inefficiencies in legacy plants brought about by unsustainably low inventory and indirect supply chain disruptions. Glendale and Pittston successfully started up additional lines during the quarter. Both plants will exit 2021 with four can manufacturing lines installed, and our Bowling Green manufacturing plant started up successfully in early October. In the near term, the work to build adequate inventory levels is ongoing. These actions and cost recovery will further position the business for success in 2022. Following the successful on-time start-ups of Glendale, Pittston and Bowling Green, Ball has announced two new greenfield plants in Nevada and North Carolina.
Both are supported by long duration contracts with strategic global customers. We are excited to invest alongside our customers and anticipate these facilities coming online in late 2022 and '24, respectively. Lastly, I would be remiss not to acknowledge and thank Colin Gillis who is retiring from Ball, for his 48 years of dedication to the company and our industry. We wish him well. Kathleen Pitre, who many of you know was our Chief Commercial and Sustainability Officer in our global beverage business, will do a great job in leading this business in the future. In EMEA, segment ship volume for the third quarter was up 4% versus 2020 on tougher comps given prior year's volume increases due to COVID reopening timing and were also up due to customers adding new can filling investments. Versus third quarter 2019, volumes were up 10.7%. Across Ball's EMEA business, demand trends and positive momentum continues. Year-to-date, our can volumes in EMEA are up 9%. Ongoing high single-digit growth will be driven by new and existing categories utilizing cans and our new greenfield plants in the U.K., Russia and Czech Republic, which are supported by long duration contracts for committed volumes with global and regional key partners. Our EMEA team is executing very well and managing complex country-by-country supply chain issues. In South America, third quarter volumes were down upper teens percent versus 2020 and up high single digits percent versus 2019. 2020 volumes were up 30% versus third quarter 2019 due to timing effects related to COVID. Cooler-than-normal seasonal temperatures in the first two months of the third quarter this year and weather damage sustained to our Extrema facility contributed to lower year-over-year volumes.
With unseasonably cold temperatures and the facility disruption largely behind us, October volumes recovered and were up 5%. We continue to see more earnings upside in South America in 2022 and beyond. The Frutal, Brazil plant started up its first line earlier this month and anticipate starting up its second line in early 2022. Additional investments throughout the region are also on schedule. As we enter the busy summer selling season and given the nice volume bounce back in October, we anticipate double-digit can growth for the full year, and additional growth will be possible once we have more capacity online. In summary, our global beverage team is preparing for long-term durable growth while managing volatility and costs across our supply chain. No doubt money was left on the table. We are laser focused on operating safely, controlling the things we can control, recovering cost and delivering high-quality cans to our customers from new and existing facilities supported by equitable contracts.
Our aluminum aerosol team did a good job supplying growth across EMEA, Mexico and Brazil, resulting in 15% higher volumes in the third quarter globally versus 2020 and 5% higher volume versus 2019 for the same period. The team continues to manage varying degrees of reopening status in Brazil and India. In addition, the business continues to expand the rollout of refillable, reclosable aluminum personal care and bottle packaging across multiple categories. To support the new cups contracts I mentioned earlier, we have increased marketing investments and are adding another cup manufacturing line in our Rome, Georgia cups plant. Following this investment, both lines will be capable of making multiple cup sizes. Turning to profitability. We anticipate 2021 total investment cost in the cup business will be in the range of $45 million, and we expect the business turning a profit in 2022. Turning to Aerospace. The team continued to win contracts and maintain record backlog. The operating earnings were up in the quarter and included the impact of rate adjustments on fixed-price contracts. This business continues to be positioned for sales and earnings growth in 2021 and margin improvement beyond 2021 given contract mix. Across all of our operations, we are actively investing in the businesses to deliver on strong demand and grow and train our labor base while also effectively managing supply chain disruptions, recovering costs, achieving returns on capital employed, nurturing our culture and delivering shareholder value. We appreciate all of the amazing work being done across the organization. And with that, I'll turn it over to Scott.