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Portugal is responsible for producing around 70% of the world’s cork and behind the supply of cork stoppers, cork insulation and other cork products is a unique environmental story. The cork oak tree can live for up to 200 years and cork is produced by stripping the bark from the tree, which then regenerates to be stripped again around 9 … Read More

Generally for items made out of cork other than cork stoppers, agglomerated cork is used as it is by far the least expensive option. However, whilst natural cork stoppers can be made out of one piece of cork, to make larger items from natural cork, we need to take strips of natural cork and glue them together to create what … Read More

Over the past few years demand for cork granules to replace rubber for infill for artificial turf for football pitches and other sports surfaces has continued to grow. Here we will explain about the options available. Many artificial turf suppliers are responding to client concerns about using rubber as infill and cork granules is one of the few options for … Read More

In 2017 we had a visit from Paul and Blanka Troop who were self-building an eco-house to be featured on the UK’s Channel 4 series, Grand Designs. They were determined to use only the most environmentally friendly materials for their house and they had concluded that expanded cork was the one of the most sustainable and effective ways to insulate … Read More

Expanded cork is made by taking resin rich cork granules (which come from the bark of the branches of Cork Oak trees), granulating it and then placing it in an autoclave where it is subject to heat and pressure. This process causes the granules to give up their resin, which in turn solidifies to glue the granules together to make … Read More

The gin sector has undoubtedly been the most dynamic spirits sector in recent years and hardly a week goes by without a new artisan gin being launched with some exotic flavour or new marketing angle. Here at CorkLink we have seen a lot of enquiries from gin producers looking to produce an innovative cork and very popular has been the … Read More

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We have had a lot of requests for cork stools and cork tables recently – generally we produce cork stools according to client designs, but given the popularity we have now produced a range of cork stools and cork tables in both the standard wine cork cylindrical format and the mushroom style champagne cork stool. The cork tables we are … Read More

Expanded cork is never going to be as cheap as synthetic insulation materials (although given its extended lifespan and capacity to retain its structural integrity for decades, it can pay for itself over the long term), but in terms of helping the planet, there is no better insulation material. Cork itself is made by stripping the bark of the cork … Read More

One of the areas we specialise in here at CorkLink is making bar-top corks (also known as capsulated corks) for the spirits industry. Typically these corks are made with a much greater degree of customisation than wine corks, for several reasons: – there is a wide variety of bottle sizes used in the spirits industry – capsules can be made … Read More

Cork is made from the bark of the cork oak tree – every 9 years the bark of the tree is removed using a sharp axe and a lot of skill and the cork oak is one of the only trees in the world that can survive having its bark removed.The skill is to peel off slabs of bark without … Read More

We supply cork rolls for underlay and insulation in two densities, 180-190 kg/m3 (CR21) and 200-220 kg/m3 (CR30) in thicknesses between 2mm and 8mm, with a minimum order of one pallet. As well as providing thermal insulation and elasticity, cork roll also offers acoustic insulation and is hypoallergenic. We have two densities of cork roll available – the standard one … Read More

When making larger stoppers for jars, candle holders, jugs etc, you essentially have two options if you decide to go with cork. The more stand option is agglomerated cork which will look like the image above. If you would prefer to go for a lipped cork option (which allows for a shallower cork depth and looks more like a lid) … Read More

Over the last 12 months the price of cork granules (and as a result cork blocks and sheets) has risen steeply and shows no sign of letting up in 2018. The reason is very clear: there has been a massive investment by the largest players in the cork stopper sector in moulding machines, which produce agglomerated cork stoppers from moulds … Read More

We supply conical cork stoppers of a wide range of sizes, starting from a few mms up to 20cm. As well as making conical corks in standard sizes and custom sizes, we also produced lipped corks such as the one shown in the image below. These corks generally have a shallower penetration into the jar or pot that they are … Read More

Generally expanded cork is used to insulate the roof or walls of a building, but it can also be used to insulate the floor of a building, which is the case for a client we recently supplied in the UK. This client is trying to build a truly environmentally friendly house and chose expanded cork as the most effective, 100% … Read More

When expanded cork boards are initially produced in autoclaves with a size of 1000x500x300mm, sometimes the natural resin that binds the granules together has a fault line in it and the block will break. The same can happen when these large blocks are cut to size to make boards. So this expanded cork cannot be used to make boards, so … Read More

There are two great options for cork insulation boards that have some different properties as well as a different appearance, but both offer a natural way of providing acoustic and thermal insulation. The traditional solution is expanded cork, which is 100% natural and is made by super-heating cork granules which forces them to expand and release their resin, which then … Read More

We receive a number of requests from distillers looking for used port wine barrels and other refurbished fortified wine barrels, such as used sherry barrels. Whilst we do carry a reasonable stock, we do have a reasonably fast turnover so we can never be exactly sure what we will have available. Typically we have refurbished 225, 250 and 500 litre … Read More

Cork are made from the bark of the cork oak tree (known in Portugal as the “Sobreiro”). It takes 25 years from the germination of an acorn to the first harvest of cork bark after which the bark regenerates and can be harvested every 9 years. The beauty of this whole process is that the tree does not need to … Read More

Expanded cork is one of natures miracle products. It is made by granulating resin rich cork bark that cannot be used for wine corks. This cork is granulated and then pressure and steam are applied, which make the granules expand and release the resin, which acts as a natural binding agent to make blocks of cork. This expanded cork is … Read More

Here is a short video showing how cork is harvested. Note that cork is made from the bark of the cork oak tree (“Sobreiro” in Portuguese) – this is a unique tree that will regenerate its bark after is has been stripped off, so no tree are chopped down in the production of cork. These cork oaks can survive 200 … Read More

We supply cork memo boards (as well as white boards and chalk boards), generally in 3 sizes: 30x40cm, 40x60cm and 60x90cm, with a wooden frame. Our standard is to supply the memo boards with shrink wrap and pins included and we can add customer labels if required. For the cork memo boards there are two options – double side cork … Read More

5 years ago, 1+1 corks (also known as technical corks) were extremely popular in the market, but in more recent years they have been increasingly substituted by micro-agglomerated corks, which in our opinion is a shame for wine producers and wine drinkers and this is why: a 1+1 cork is made from an agglomerated cork body with a natural cork … Read More

John Gilman writes the highly regarded wine newsletter View from the Cellar and it was great to hear the bile he had to direct at the overuse of screwcaps in the Australian wine industry in particular. In a piece he wrote for the celebrated blog, Dr.Vino , he expressed his mystification about why any wine really worth drinking that was … Read More

Here is a video about how important it is to preserve the natural cork forests of Portugal and Spain, a unique habitat for wildlife. The easiest way to do this is to do what we are learning to do in so many areas of our life and choose natural over synthetic – so when you next buy a bottle of … Read More

Something like 70% of the world’s cork comes from Portugal and given the worldwide connectivity that the internet gives us and very competitive international transportation rates, it makes sense to consider buying your cork direct from Portugal and not from a national distributor from your country. Here at CorkLink we run a low-cost business model, for three reasons: – our … Read More

Cork dust or cork powder is produced when corks are ground down to size using grinding stones, which results in a very fine powder, which has a variety of uses. It can be used to produce colmated corks, where the dust is used to patch up imperfections in the surface of lower quality natural corks and is also used in … Read More

We supply cork granules direct from our facilities in Portugal to customers all round the world. We regularly get asked about the options for different densities and the reasons that costs vary so much for different densities, so here is an explanation. It is useful to understand how cork granules are made: cork bark is peeled off the cork oak … Read More

Natural cork has a confusing system of different qualities, which could be a lot more simple, but unfortunately isn’t! The basic classification system for natural wine corks or natural capsulated (bar-top) corks starts with the very best corks “Flor”, which should have no surface imperfections, just the occasional visible line, then it goes down to Extra, then Super, then First, … Read More

We supply a complete range of conical corks sizes direct from Portugal, from size 000 (6.3/4.0 x 12.7mm) up to very large conical corks with a diameter of 20cm+. We can also do custom sizes and conical corks with holes or even one piece bar-top style corks as shown in the photo: You can see here the normal finish options … Read More

Here is a film about why natural cork from Portugal is the best solution for bottling wine both in terms of its quality as a sealant and the environmental benefits. The cork oak forests of Portugal are among the most biologically rich on earth and harvesting the cork only requires the bark being stripped – the trees live on! Plastic … Read More

A study was carried out a few years ago by PriceWaterhouseCoopers to look at the environmental impact of different wine closures, considering cork, aluminium and plastic options. What they looked at was the lifecycle of each type of closure to work out the cost to the environment of 1,000 closures, in terms of energy, water consumption, air pollution and solid waste. … Read More

At CorkLink we are just as proud to serve our small customers as our large ones and one of our smaller customers who keeps coming back for more corks is The Little Kit Company, which makes mini wine making kits (and they are really mini – one bottle at a time!). Kirstyn Holgate came up with the idea and runs … Read More

Not so long ago, all corks were what are now termed natural, that is punched out of the cork bark by a skilled worker with a punching machine and a lot of patience (see photo below). Sadly these natural wine corks are gradually being replaced by agglomerated corks, which are far easier to make and do not require anything like … Read More

We receive a lot of questions about how cork stoppers should be stored once they have been received by clients. The most important thing is that once you have received your cork stoppers from your supplier, you should use them to bottle your wine or whatever within around 6 months. After this time the surface treatment (generally silicone or paraffin) … Read More

We supply natural cork balls in sizes of 8, 10, 16, 18, 20 and 25mm (and agglomerated cork balls in these sizes and larger). Natural cork balls are in fact very difficult to produce in high quality, as they need to be worked delicately and also need to be made from good quality natural cork in order to not have … Read More