Screwcaps now boast a 15% share of the world’s wine bottle closure market, according to a leading screwcap manufacturer.
Italian closure company Guala claims global screwcap sales have increased by 25% in the past year to 2.5 billion closures. Anne Seznec of Guala told Decanter that recent growth had come from Europe, which is regarded as a tough market for alternative closures.
“We’ve seen a lot of growth in France, Germany, Austria, Spain and Italy,” said Seznec. “Screwcap sales have been growing much faster than we’d thought, since the end of 2006.”
“We agree with Guala that the wine screwcap market size globally is about 2.5 billion closures,” said a spokesperson for Nomacorc, a leading synthetic cork producer. “Synthetics represent 4 billion closures.”
Carlos de Jesus, marketing and communications director of cork giant Amorim, suggested these figures were an overestimate, and put current screwcap sales at 1.7 billion. He believes sales of both screwcaps and natural cork will increase in coming years at the expense of synthetic corks.
According to Seznec’s estimates, European screwcap sales top 1 billion. The Australian and New Zealand wine industry use 800 million screwcaps every year, while Argentina and Chile account for 250 million screwcap sales.
“There was fantastic growth in Argentina last year'” said Seznec, “which surprised us.'”
