“When Quality, Consistency & Value matter!”

 

Company Background:
Neocork Technologies began in 1996 as a Research and Development company dedicated to one purpose, the development, manufacture and marketing of a technically superior, proprietary and competitively priced line of synthetic wine cork products. We began commercial shipments in February 1999. Now, we ship tens of millions of closures every month to over 2,000 customers around the world, including the Wine Enthusiast Magazine 2005 American Winery of the year winner, Don Sebastiani & Sons.

Facilities:
To avoid disruption of supply due to acts of god, fire, transportation delays, etc., Neocork maintains 2 separate manufacturing sites in No. America, with a 3rd planned for Europe in 2008.  We also have printing/finishing facilities in both No. America and Europe.

References:
Sebastiani & Sons “Smoking Loon” brand has achieved phenomenal growth over the past 5 years, growing from ~40,000 cases a year to nearly 2 million cases, all with an Orange colored Neocork, evidence of broad consumer acceptance and consistent performance of Neocork closures.  Thousands of other important brands in a variety of price categories and markets around the world have witness similar consumer success with Neocork. In addition, Neocork can be found in a number of other international and private label brands created by leading grocery retailers and importers such as Sainsbury’s, Safeway, Marks & Spencer, Tesco, Bottle Green, Aldi, Asda, Ehrmanns, Waverley, Bibendum and more.  In addition, many of the retailers and importers have begun to insist on the proven performance of co-extruded corks like Neocork.

Manufacturing Process:
Unhappy with the inherent part-to-part inconsistency commonly found in molded products, Neocork patented a co-extrusion manufacturing process for our cork.  Co-extrusion is a continuous process which involves tight processing parameters that allow continuous measuring and monitoring. This continuous process ensures cork #1 looks and performs exactly like cork #400,000.  First this process creates an inner foam core from a highly resilient foamed resin which allows Neocork to maintain pressure against the neck of the bottle over a long period of time. In tandem, outer skin surface of a more elastic material is extruded which ensures Neocork is resistant to corker cuts, wrinkles and leakage in addition to providing an excellent surface to print on. Working like a gasket, the outer skin also forms a smooth seal with the bottle wall, allowing easy extraction and reinsertion.

Materials:
Neocork base materials are made from FDA & EU compliant, engineered polymers commonly used in the food industry. They offer complete consistency from batch to batch, are free of impurities and do not support microbial growth. Every cork can be traced back to every production step, and even back to the specific lots of raw materials. There is simply not a cleaner, more neutral and inert cork available today.

The technical attributes above plus our outstanding two-color printing have made Neocork one of the leading synthetic cork suppliers to wineries around the world.

Market:
88% of all wine sold in the U.S. is priced under $14 a bottle.  Last year, there were close to 3 billion bottles sold in the U.S. represented by about 3,000 different brands.  These brands were competing for only 13.7% of the adult population known as the “core wine consumers” as those consumers purchased 87% of all the wines sold in the U.S.  This increased competition and limited consumer base means wineries must be more vigilant than ever in controlling packaging costs while ensuring quality and bottle-to-bottle consistency.  They can no longer afford to chance brand success with an inconsistent or unproven closure, so more and more they, and their retail customers are choosing the proven consistency, price competitiveness and consumer appeal of co-extruded Neocorks.

Neocork, When Quality, Consistency & Value matter.