Contexte

In relation to the world market for oak barriques, according to different reports, it is estimated that it will reach €1,050 M in 2026 with an annual growth of 5.3% from €770M in 2020(21). The main market is Europe, followed by the USA, and the market leader is Tonnellerie Francois Freres (TTF) with a market share of around 24%. The main operators in the market are: TFF, Oeneo, Nadalie, World Cooperage, Bouchared Cooperages, G & P Garbellotto S.p.A, Canton Cooperage, The Barrel Mill and Kelvin Cooperage. The development of this project will allow Spanish cooperages to access state-of-the-art technology with the application of AI to improve their production process, offering barrels with greater homogeneity, as well as the possibility of expanding the product portfolio from American oak barrels to barrels with known oxygenation potential, which will represent an important differentiation in the cooperage market. The positioning of Spanish cooperage groups in a groundbreaking technology could be the decisive step towards a qualitative leap compared to French and American groups in particular. This innovation will be passed on to the wineries, which in turn will be passed on to consumers, who will be able to access wines with specific profiles. In the field of distillates, the impact of the development of the project will be very important due to the importance of wood in most of the products produced. The sector will have the opportunity to develop new products with new profiles to offer minority and exclusive products.

Additional comments

The development of the project is justified by the need to digitalize/innovate the cooperage sector, which seeks to give objectivity to the selection process of wood for the manufacture of barriques for wines and distillates. This is a perfectly defined need with a great impact, not only in the cooperage sector, but also in the winemaking sector, which depends on the adequate supply of barrels to obtain quality wines/distillates with a specific profile. The oenological sector seeks a constant and homogeneous supply of barriques in terms of quality, which is quite difficult as wood is a natural product, with great structural variations even within the same trunk. The production of wines/distillates with the appropriate characteristics demanded by the consumer depends on this. The objective classification of oak staves for the manufacture of barriques using the latest technologies of image analysis, wood digitalization and machine learning, together with the transfer of knowledge to the cooperage sector, will respond to the aforementioned demand of winemakers, who now, with the technology and the expected results of this project, will be able to count on homogeneous barrels with a known oxygen transfer rate.