The Spanish research institute Tecnalia, in Bizkaia (Vizcaya), has developed a new material to replace plastic and cork as stoppers for wine bottles. The project developing this new composite, called PLACOTOP, includes the companies Plásticos Urteta in Spain and Rescoll-Societé de Recherche in France, and is funded in part by the European Commission.
Plastic stoppers are replacing more and more natural corks, mainly because of plastic’s lower price. Plastic stoppers today account for only 13 percent of the total market — about 20 thousand million stoppers annually –- but are expected to increase in market share up to 50 percent over the next ten years. Most manufacturers of plastic or stoppers are small and medium-sized enterprises located in Spain, France, Germany, and Italy.
The PLACOTOP project is developing a composite material that’s a hybrid between the natural cork and a largely bio-based plastic. Tecnalia says the new material offers a number of advantages, such as a lower price than cork, less density, less extracting effort and better environmental performance than the plastic stoppers, with the plastic material being partially substituted by materials obtained from biomass. The new material also helps save cork trees, the raw material for cork.
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