Why I’m long on cork.
First, Griffin started making awesome iPhone covers like this one out of cork. Super.
Second. Though you’ve likely seen and become accustomed to synthetic wine corks, 78% of wine bottles are still sealed with real cork. Companies like Corticeira Amorim of Portugal and Oeneo of France have recently found ways to make wine corks taint-free, ie will not get “corked.” Amorim is doing this by steaming out compounds caused by naturally occurring fungus, bringing cork taint to less than 1% from as much as 5% previously. Plus, synthetic stoppers don’t provide as tight of a seal as real cork, allowing oxygen to get into the wine and causing it to spoil.
Third. There’s been a growing demand for cork scraps to use in green houses in floors and walls. Cork is fire and water resistant, insulates against noise and cold, and is porous and flexible. It’s also very environmentally friendly – cork comes from the bark stripped off a tree, rather than from felled trees. It does the tree no harm. Though the housing market is in decline, green housing may prevail through the down times and will certainly take rise once the economy is back on its feet, as I believe our global warming fears are here to stay. Forecasts for the green building market expect a rise from $7.6B in 2005 to $20B in 2012.
Fourth. Supply is fixed and it takes a long time for supply to increase. Cork is made by stripping the bark from a slow-growing oak tree. Once stripped, the bark must regenerate for 9 to 14 years before it can be stripped again. It takes 30 years for a cork oak tree (regenerated by acorns) to reach maturity. If demand continues to increase and supply is fixed, prices will increase. Furthermore, cork oak’s future could be endangered. Its flowers, which contain its seeds, are a culinary delicacy and are picked as food, thus hindering its natural regeneration process.
That’s why.
