20:17 | 09.03.2010
Cork Supply Engineers Another Technical Breakthrough for Natural Corks
Cork Supply®, previously awarded the 2007 Sitevi®
Innovation Medal for their patented INNOCORK® technique of
removing TCA from natural corks, is announcing an exciting new
technological breakthrough in their R&D for improving the quality and
consistency of natural cork for wines.
Through the use of a non-invasive, non-destructive, patent-pending
technology, Cork Supply is now able to accurately analyze the internal
structure of individual natural corks. By applying this knowledge
innovatively to their production sorting processes, Cork Supply is
looking to revolutionize the way corks are inspected, graded and sold.
ZERO DEFECTS
Currently, the cork industry’s advanced manual and electronic inspection
methods allow for corks to be screened for critical defects (defects
that are considered likely to compromise the sealability performance of
a cork in a bottle) and sorted by visual grade. These effective methods
for sorting and grading are, however, limited to externally
identifiable characteristics of the cork. By additionally analyzing the internal
structure of a cork, Cork Supply inspection techniques will be able to
screen out virtually 100% of all critical defects – including defects
that may not be visible externally.
INCREASED CONSISTENCY
Moreover, Cork Supply is using this same technology to predict the
permeability of natural corks. In the future, Cork Supply expects to be
able to sort out ‘permeability outliers’ – corks with extreme
permeability rates – pioneering a new commercial standard for cork
consistency and assuring reduced bottle variation and random oxidation
risk from natural cork.
PREDICTIVE OTR
Additionally, Cork Supply believes its technical innovation will enable
it to transform one of cork’s most often critiqued characteristics – its
inherent heterogeneity (or structural variability) – into one of
cork’s greatest natural competitive advantages for the marketplace.
Nature produces corkwood of different densities, which results in
varying permeability rates from cork to cork. Many wineries, citing
cork’s organic variability as an inherent material flaw, have switched
in recent years from natural cork to synthetic and screw cap closures,
which use plastic and metal materials engineered for consistent and
precise oxygen ingress measurements. Whereas engineered closure
manufacturers need to modify polymers, molds and tooling in order to
design and produce a collection of closures offering a range of specific
permeability levels, Cork Supply will instead harness, qualify and
categorically sort the abundant variety Mother Nature already makes
available – enabling them to offer wineries selective natural cork
lots of a specific visual grade with consistent, predictable
transmission rates (OTR).
NATURAL ADVANTAGE
Being 100% natural, biodegradable and recyclable, the corkwood bark that
corks are punched from literally grows on trees, and is renewably
harvested without the tree being cut down. Corks have the smallest
carbon footprint of any wine closure, and cork forests they financially
sustain provide habitat and ecological services that are vital to the
Earth’s biosphere – including functioning as a massive carbon sink. By
every measure, cork is the wine closure with the most environmentally,
socially and economically sustainable beginning-of-life and end-of-life
cycles. Moreover, natural cork has traditionally been and today remains
the most preferred closure choice amongst consumers in the USA, the
world’s largest wine market.
And yet, despite its clear natural advantages, in recent years natural
cork has lost significant market share to synthetics and screw caps for
reasons promoted as their “materially engineered advantages” over cork:
Reduced risk of TCA (2,4,6-Trichloroanisole) taint
Reduced levels of bottle variation and random oxidation
Consistent, predictable OTR for controlled aging
Through significant investment in innovative solutions such as this
latest technical breakthrough, Cork Supply is leading the industry in
tackling and resolving these substantive winery concerns and proving
that natural cork – in addition to being the best closure for the planet
– still remains a viable, competitive option for bottled wine that lives
up to its status in the marketplace as the most valued and preferred
premium wine closure.
With companies spanning the globe, Cork Supply® specializes
in the production and distribution of premium wine corks, closures and
capsules. As one of the first companies to be awarded FSC®
certification of their global cork production facilities in Portugal,
and a founding member of the WWF-GFTN (Global Forest Trade Network)
Iberia, Cork Supply is committed to sustainable forest stewardship and
responsible purchasing of forest products. For more information, please
visit www.corksupply.com.
|
