The Whistler Tree

Click here to view the Cork Harvesting Photographs

Click here to view the International Code of Cork Stopper Manufacturing Practice

Cork Industry

Cork is a natural and renewable product produced by the Cork Oak tree (Quercus Suber). Because of its unique properties: elasticity, lightweight, impermeability, insulation and resistance to vibration, cork has many uses. However, it is the production of stoppers for the wine and spirits trades that provides the main revenue that sustains cork forests in Portugal, Spain and other countries around the Mediterranean.

The environmental importance of the cork forests in Southern Spain, Portugal and many other Mediterranean countries is well recognised by the European Union. Without cork trees many areas in those countries could become desert similar to North Africa. For this reason, the E.U. is actively encouraging with monetary grants the planting of new cork trees because they are a renewable resource; they prevent soil erosion; they support other types of vegetation; and they provide a habitat for raising animals like sheep, pigs and goats.

The Association of Cork Producers in Portugal (APCOR) appointed Euro Strategies 1999 to handle a Public Relations programme in the UK. APCOR (Associação Portuguesa de Cortiça), the industry body representing all the major cork producers is based in the north of Portugal where over 60% of the world’s cork closures for the wine & spirits industries is produced.

Since the E.U. funded Quercus report was published in 1996, there has been a radical change in the production methods, storage and processing of cork for transforming into bottle stoppers. Massive investment has been made in new technologies, production facilities and quality control procedures.

As a result a Code of Good Manufacturing Practice has been drawn up and the majority of cork manufacturers have volunteered to be audited by an independent body – Bureau Veritas – to prove they comply with the Code.

The European Union continues to encourage the planting of new cork forests as a long-term measure to maintain biodiverse cultivation in areas of southern Europe which would otherwise be threatened by drought.

Euro Strategies is very much involved in the debate within the wine industry about closures. It is important that people in the UK are aware of the environmental issues of abandoning marital cork stoppers in favour of plastic because it is the UK wine trade that is leading this accelerating trend.

Click here if you would like to find out more.

The Guardian supports Cork against Plastic