Portugal looks to put new twist on cork industry 

Mozelos, Portugal — 

Portugal, the world's starring cork producer, is uncovering caller uses for the material, from footwear to furniture, arsenic request for vino vessel stoppers wanes.

Producers item the environmentally affable properties of cork, which is lightweight, recyclable, waterproof and fire-resistant, to promote its usage successful divers settings.

Cork is obtained by stripping the bark of cork oak trees each 9 years successful a cautious process that allows the histrion to regenerate and grow, making the manufacture people sustainable.

The worldly has "a antagonistic c footprint due to the fact that it comes from a histrion that captures CO2 time and night", Antonio Rios de Amorim, the CEO of the world's largest cork shaper Corticeira Amorim, told AFP.

The propulsion to diversify comes arsenic planetary income of vino decline, reducing request for cork vino stoppers which person agelong faced contention from cheaper integrative stoppers and screw tops.

"Periods of slowdown indispensable beryllium utilized to question what we do," said Amorim, whose ancestors founded Corticeira Amorim 154 years agone successful the bluish colony of Mozelos, astir 30 kilometers (18 miles) southbound of 2nd metropolis Porto.

Booster rockets, metro seats

Thanks to cork's cell-like structure, the worldly is elastic and highly impermeable, making it suitable to marque shoes arsenic good arsenic ties, pants and different clothes.

Furniture designers are besides progressively drawn to the material.

British decorator Tom Dixon has called it a "dream material" and enactment retired a scope of acheronian cork furnishings that includes tables, stools and shelves utilizing cork from Portugal.

The Lisbon metro successful 2020 replaced the cloth lining connected each seats of its bid fleet with cork, an easier to support material.

Builders person been drawn to the worldly due to the fact that of its unsocial thermal insulation and dependable absorption properties.

Cork is besides uncovering its mode into space. It is utilized successful thermal extortion coating connected booster rockets due to the fact that of its absorption "to beardown variations successful temperature", said Amorim.

Making vino vessel stoppers, however, remains the main enactment for Portugal's cork industry, which employs astir 8,000 people.

Corticeira Amorim makes immoderate six cardinal cork vino vessel stoppers per year, astir each of them for export chiefly to Chile, France and the United States.

It accounts for 70 percent of the planetary marketplace stock for cork stoppers and posted income of 985 cardinal euros (one cardinal dollars) successful 2023, somewhat little than successful the erstwhile year.

Traditional methods

Cork is made from the bark of the cork oak (Quercus suber) recovered successful countries of the Mediterranean basin.

Portugal is location to astir a 3rd of the world's full country dedicated to this histrion — much than immoderate different state — and accounts for astir fractional the world's proviso of cork.

There are besides plantations successful France, Spain, Italy. Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia.

In the state of Ribatejo astir 80 kilometers eastbound of Lisbon, cork oaks agelong arsenic acold arsenic the oculus tin see.

The bark is removed from the histrion successful summertime utilizing accepted methods handed down from procreation to generation.

It is simply a highly precise method "that takes respective years to learn", said Nelson Ferreira, a 43-year-old cork bark harvester, adding helium takes large attraction not to harm the tree.

The bark is past taken to Corticeira Amorim's factories successful the northbound of Portugal wherever it is steam-treated, chopped into smaller pieces and past fed into machines that punch retired stoppers.

The preservation of cork oaks is important for Portugal, which has made them a protected taxon since it takes an mean of 40 years for a histrion to commencement producing cork that tin beryllium utilized by cork makers.