Arun Viswanathan: Thanks.
Timothy Donahue: Thank you.
Operator: Thank you. Our next question is from Anthony Pettinari from Citi. Your line is open. You may begin.
Anthony Pettinari: Good morning. I’m wondering if you can talk about kind of operating rates may be broadly by region. And you’ve given preliminary capex guidance for ’24, ’25. Assuming this capex guidance doesn’t include big greenfields, just wondering if you could talk about where you think you may be able to grow volumes over the next couple of years without adding kind of big projects?
Timothy Donahue: Yes. Listen, we can grow in every market without adding more capital. We brought up two large can plants in the United States this year, Virginia and Nevada. And clearly, as they go through learning curve and their productivity improves and more good saleable cans come out the back end of the line, we grow. I would say that operating rates in North America are fairly healthy. I would say that if the industry currently — I’m thinking about the second quarter, but the third quarter was a little stronger. We got to be around 90% to 91%, 92%. I don’t think there’s a supply/demand imbalance in North America. And I think as customers continue to push cans, we all have a little bit of spare capacity. We can fill that demand.
And I don’t think we’re going to see a supply/demand imbalance in North America. Things are pretty healthy, and they are going to get healthier. I think in most other markets, there probably is a little bit of slack. That doesn’t mean the markets are not healthy. I think — as we said in the prepared remarks, Brazil is starting to improve economically. Interest rates coming down a little, unemployment coming down a little, consumer spending starting to rise a little, albeit a little slower than we’ve seen in the past, but GDP turning positive. And so over the next several years, we and others are well positioned to continue to meet the ongoing growth in the Brazilian market as we have for the last two decades. Obviously, the Vietnamese market has been exceptionally soft this year.
I think the one number I could give you is that beer fillings in Vietnam for nine months this year compared to last year, down about 25%. So again, as that market recovers, we are well positioned to grow. And in Europe, we’re bringing on a very large two-line can plant in the UK now. Not all of that is incremental capacity. Some of it replaces the other plant in the UK that we’re moving out of. But certainly, there is incremental capacity there as well as the capacity that we added in Italy and Spain early this year or late last year. So we are well positioned to grow without having to spend any more than this $500 million number that we’ve talked about for the next couple or three years.
Anthony Pettinari: Okay. That’s very helpful. And then just switching gears, can you help us understand kind of what’s going on with aerosol and maybe outlook moving forward? If this is destocking, maybe where are we in that process? And just any additional color you can give on aerosol?
Timothy Donahue: Yes. So, I mean, as we said before, aerosol is more of an economically sensitive product. If you think about the aerosol can, it’s a really convenient way to dispense product, a very clean and convenient way, albeit a little bit more expensive for the consumer. So things start to tighten up, the consumer starts to tighten their belt. They don’t need to buy air freshener, they don’t need to buy bug spray, less and less man are shaving than ever shaved before. So they are not buying as much shave cream or they shave with a bar of soap, a little less comfortable, maybe a couple more nicks and cuts, but if you don’t have to spend the money, you don’t spend the money, you just blot your cut on your face, I guess, so.
