Cork – There is a big difference

I wanted to share some photos of cork and the process a bit with some basic details, but I want to reinforce that the difference I see in the cork made in the EU vs. the cork made in China is HUGE.

Every aspect from raw material, components, glues, core boards, technique, oversight, waste handling, chemical handling during and after production, quality control, ISO utilization and much more are not even close.

There are alot of great factories in China that I have inspected in many flooring categories, but I can say at this moment that there are none that produce cork at an acceptable formaldehyde level of E1 or E0. Any cork from China is E2 or higher. We therefore have ceased buying any cork flooring from China.

I will delve into great detail in the future as I have time, but Ryan and I have really noted some of the superior planning, vision and execution standards in the EU and we believe the customers that seek a true ECO advantage should focus on products that deliver it.

Here are some photos just to give you a sense of the scope of these types of factories:

This is a giant pile of raw material. The bark of the cork tree once removed from the tree (without damaging the tree of course) is then taken to a plant for cork stoppers to be punched from the thick bark. Once the stoppers are punched out the “waste” material is sent to an agglomeration facility to be ground up to make all kinds of cork products.

 

This gives you an idea of the scale of just one stock pile. There are dozens of piles of material this size!

Here are some examples of pallets of material that will later be made into floors. The raw material has been processed, but not yet cut and made into cork flooring.

This is a photo of some slabs of cork oak bark that have been harvested from the tree. You can see varying thicknesses and even and old style tool they used to harvest. (this was in a cork museum.)

Here you can see some of the “virgin” cork which is the first harvest of a cork oak tree at about 25 years of age. So the tree reaches that point and the first bark is removed. This virgin bark is 100% NOT SUITABLE for cork stoppers therefore all of it would otherwise be waste, except for the fact that it can be ground up and used in flooring, bulletin boards and other cork related products. That is true recycling.

This is a picture of the “smoke stack” where clean air is returned to the sky. This plant is in full production and the lack of emissions is truly remarkable. This is the plant that produces Westhollow Provincial cork flooring.