Cork is a natural cellular material with increasing industry applications due to its remarkable combination of properties. Its mechanical behaviour explains why it is often used for applications like sealing, packaging, insulation, vibration control, weight reduction, flotation, sound dampening and many others. However, the mechanical behaviour of cork when subjected to impact has not been well investigated yet. In the present work, the authors compare the quasi-static and dynamic response of four types of cork when compressed axially at strain rates from 10−3 s−1 to 600 s−1. Furthermore, in order to analyse the possible benefits to use the different types of cork in lightweight absorbing-energy structures, aluminum cork-filled tubes and their empty counterparts are tested experimentally and numerically at some quasi-static and dynamic strain rates under axial compressive loading. Data from the Split-Hopkinson Pressure Bar are used to generate stress-strain curves for natural and agglomerate cork samples. The numerical simulations of the dynamic compression of the specimens are performed using the finite element method software LS-DYNATM and show quite good agreement with the experimental results. In order to investigate the possible advantages of corkfilling in longer tubes with a different section, the authors also simulate the influence of the introduction of agglomerate cork in square aluminum tubes. For the cork-filled structures, when compared with the empty aluminum tubes, greater crushing forces and energy absorption capacities are observed (experimentally and numerically) for high values of the strain. The square structures analysed numerically, when filled with cork, show greater values of energy absorption since the beginning of the deformation process.