Aluminium Foil
A thin, easily shaped sheet of aluminium, widely used for food packaging, insulation and industrial wrapping applications.
Covered in 1 MetalsCost.com News Intelligence article, most recently on August 27, 2026.
Overview
Aluminium foil is aluminium rolled down to a thickness where it behaves less like sheet metal and more like a flexible barrier material — thin enough to fold by hand yet still fully opaque to light and gas. It's made by cold-rolling high-purity aluminium alloy through progressively tighter rolling mills; below about 15 microns, two sheets are rolled together as a "double sheet" and separated afterward, which is why one side of household foil is shiny and the other matte. Thicknesses in commercial use span roughly 6 to 200 microns depending on the job.
Who Consumes It
Food and beverage packaging is the largest single consumer — foil pouches, lidding on yoghurt cups and ready-meal trays, and the foil layer inside tetra-pack cartons, prized because it blocks light, oxygen and moisture better than plastic film alone. Pharmaceutical blister packaging is another major buyer, using foil-backed cavities to protect tablets from humidity. Beyond packaging, foil is laminated into building insulation as a radiant barrier, wrapped around cables and pipes for thermal protection, and used in capacitor windings and heat-exchanger fins.
