Cork has been used as a closure for thousands of years. From amphorae to wine and sparkling wine bottles, we have the most renowned examples of authors and brands who have used this noble material. In the 17th century, Dom Pérignon chose cork stoppers to seal the bottles of his famous champagne, and it is said that the first bottle of Coca-Cola, produced between 1894 and 1899, was sealed with a cork stopper. Centuries later, innovation and the globalisation of new technologies such as Xpür®, which combat TCA and other sensory deviations, are increasingly precise. From Dom Pérignon’s France to the vineyards of South Africa, one thing can be known for sure: the cork stopper is going global, with Amorim.
1. 21st century supercritical fluid technology drives international sales of Amorim Cork’s Xpür® microgranulated stoppers
With an R&D process dating back to 2016 and a global launch in 2021, Xpür® is a major innovation in Amorim Cork’s armoury for combatting TCA. The aim is not “simply” to ensure that releasable TCA content is equal to or lower than the detection limit of 0.3 ng*, but to do so in a much more efficient manner than traditional supercritical CO2 technology, that was developed in the 20th century. Xpür® uses only 25% of the energy and 10% of the CO2 previously required, important advances that allow Xpür® stoppers to offer the best CO2 balance of microgranulated cork stoppers at -393 g/e per stopper. An independent study conducted by the consultancy firm PriceWaterhouseCoopers established this impressive figure and also reveals that the Xpür® stopper has a carbon footprint of -3.542 g CO2 per stopper when considering the cradle-to-gate approach and -2.086 g CO2 per stopper when considering shipping to the UK, one of the most world’s important wine import markets. But the demanding specifications set by the company went even further. Idealisedfor premium, fast-rotation wines, Amorim also stipulated that Xpür® stoppers must offer the highest percentage of cork of any other equivalent cork stopper. This has been achieved with a composition of 98% natural cork by volume that dispenses with unnecessary chemical impacts while maintaining a consistently low O2 transfer rate. Faced with the long list of innovations implemented, wine producers from all over the world have responded with such widespread enthusiasm that it led to the immediate construction of a second Xpür® unit, which will come into operation in the second half of 2023. To capitalise on this success, Amorim Cork has launched an ambitious promotional campaign for Xpür® technology in 2023 - the company’s largest ever global advertising campaign, covering the world’s 12 main wine markets and more than 30 leading wine publications, including, for the first time, advertising in some of the world’s most prestigious wine magazines. Finally, to give more context to the innovation effort, it is important to remember that both the development and launch of Xpür® coincided with the R&D process that enabled the launch of Naturity® technology for natural cork stoppers. These two pioneering technologies, aimed at natural cork and microgranulated cork stoppers, are the world’s most ecological, innovative and efficient anti-TCA technologies. In a world where cork is increasingly an example of the necessary balance between the 3 Ps of sustainability for the 21st century:people, planet and partnerships.
* Releasable TCA content equal to or less than the detection limit of 0.3 ng/l; analysis conducted according to an in-house method based on the ISO 20752 standard.
2. Sustainable Development in review with the BCSD
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