Amorim Cork invests 10 million Euros in anti-cork flavour technology

The first stoppers using this technology have already been marketed in six countries

Amorim Cork has recently launched an innovative technology that, for the first time, allows wine producers to use natural cork stoppers that ensure a non-detectable TCA in just 20 seconds.

This new technology is the result  of 10 million Euros of investment in R&D, during five years, in partnership with an international company with expertise in gaseous chromatography.

In a press release, Amorim Cork explained that "NDTech is state-of-the-art technology, enabling a revolution in terms of quality control, as it introduces individual triage for the first time in production lines of cork stoppers, based on gaseous chromatography, one of the world’s most sophisticated chemical analysis ".

This analysis usually takes about 14 minutes, but this new technology enabled Amorim Cork to reduce that to 20 seconds "thus making it feasible to integrate it in an industrial scale”.

The president of  Amorim Cork, stressed that "the company’s robust investment towards continuously providing the market with quality cork stoppers has been determinant for consolidating the role of Amorim Cork as this industry’s leader: during the last 5 years, it went from selling 3 billion Euros in stoppers to a new record of 4.2 billion in 2015”.

Rios Amorim thinks that "this growth partly results from an increased general perception of the cork stopper’s technical advantages and sustainability, as well as its ability to add value to wine. With NDTech, we simply improved what already was the best sealant for wine”.

The new technology is able to detect any cork stopper with more than 0.5 nanograms/litre  (parts per trillion) of TCA, which is automatically removed from the production line. Such level of precision at an industrial scale is surprising, since the 0.5 nanograms/litre detection threshold can be the equivalent to a drop of water in 800 Olympic swimming pools.

NDTech has been validated by Germany’s Geisenheim University and the Australian WIne Research Institute, two world leaders in research for the wine industry.

During this first stage, the NDTech technology will be applied to Amorim Cork’s premium natural stoppers, which are used by some of the world’s most important wine brands.

Carlos Jesus, the company’s communication director told Económico that "this technology is surprising, and even more so considering it was developed in Portugal. Return on investment has already begun,  but the project’s international dimension is even more important. As we expected, wine producers have shown a very positive receptiveness.”