Around the world, the annual use of aluminium closures for wine has grown rapidly in the last decade, to 4 billion in 2011.
The advantages are numerous:
• Absence of cork taint, meaning less wasted wine
• Consistency from bottle to bottle
• Preservation of aromas, flavors and freshness
• Wide range of closures sizes with innovative design and infinite decoration options
• Easy to store and ship, and open and reclose
• Easy to recycle.
On the first point, studies reveal that cork taint – when a traditional cork has gone bad and ruins the taste of the wine – accounts for some 3.5 per cent of annual wine production. The offending bottles are mostly thrown away as unenjoyable.
Hydro supplies this growing market with strip aluminium stock for screw caps from our rolled products plant Slim, in Cisterna di Latina south of Rome in Italy – enough to seal roughly 216.5 million bottles each year.
Seal of quality
"Aluminium closures are a 'seal of quality,' not just from the viewpoint of the wine’s flavor, but also from the aspects of sustainability, convenience, and cost efficiency," explains Franco Bove, chairman of the EAFA Closures Group.
"There is an ever-growing awareness of the many benefits and quality-enhancing properties of the aluminium closure in the industry itself and in the marketing and product-design sectors, too. With the facts of the 'Aluminium Closures – Turn 360°' campaign, we’re laying the foundations for an objective, unblinkered reappraisal of this closure form, one that is truly sustainable in all respects," says Bove.
Campaign kick-off
Providing easy-to-grasp information and the latest scientific findings regarding sustainability, the aluminium closure industry takes a clear path in demonstrating its superior characteristics.
This week, the multilingual website http://www.aluminium-closures.org/ was launched to reach an even broader public the many benefits of aluminium closures.
Less waste, lower emissions
Taking cultivation, production and transport into account, each bottle of wine represents an environmental package. In contrast, already Hydro's shipments for the production of aluminium closures help to save about several thousand metric tons of CO2 emissions per year.
