In recent years in the world of bar-top corks, there has been a massive shift away from plastic capsules to wood, principally because spirits brands are looking for more sustainable options for their packaging. For a while this led to severe wooden capsule shortages for bar-top cork suppliers with lead times stretching out to several months of wooden capsules as the sector struggled to keep up with demand. However, over the last couple of years there has been considerable investment in the production of wooden capsules for bar-top corks and lead times have returned to more manageable limits. Most of the investment in wooden bar-top corks production has been in beech wood and here we will look at the reasons why beech wood is generally the preferred option.
The aesthetics of beech wood for bar-top corks
Beech wood has a light color, smooth texture, and fine grain pattern so the capsules look and feel elegant. Typically spirits brands are looking for a wooden capsule to give a sophisticated look to their product and beech provides exactly this.
Beech is easy to machine into capsules
From a bar-top corks manufacturer’s perspective, using a wood that will be easy to work in lathes and other processing equipment is very important. Beech tends not to split or gouge, so we get very few rejects and we can operate the lathes at high speeds
Sustainability and environmental awareness
One of the key factors driving the preference for beech wood in cork capsules is its sustainability. Beech trees are abundant and grow at a relatively fast rate, making them an ideal renewable resource, which aligns with the growing trend in the spirits industry toward sustainability and environmental consciousness.
Customisation of bar-top cork capsules
The light colour and fine-grain of beech means that customization in terms of engraved, printed or heat-branded logos stand out well and are relatively easy to produce. Furthermore beech wood is easy to stain, so we are able to produce capsules in a broad range of colours from honey hues to dark mahogany or even black.
So you can see why we strongly advise our clients to go with beech wood (with the only really viable alternative being birch, which shares many of the benefits of beech). Beech makes our life easier as bar-top cork manufacturers for the reasons outlined above, but also because it is what we hold stock of and are used to working with, so changing to a more exotic alternative can be a real headache for us (!). But really the main benefit is to the customer as beech capsules will deliver the most consistently reliable capsules, with great flexibility in terms of customisation and a great looking capsule at the end of it. Please contact us at CorkLink if you are looking for more information on wooden capsules for your bar-top corks.
