Lisbon: In Portugal, a 150-year-old business making corks is showing that it is absolutely possible to teach an old dog new tricks.
Having cultivated cork oak trees since the time of the monarchy, Corticeira Amorim has unlocked the potential of the humble material, transforming it into sustainable, sophisticated technology that can line the deck of a cruise ship and even insulate a spaceship.
Cork oak forests are an unusual sight, and the plantation at Herdade Rio Frio is one of the largest planted cork oak forests of them all. Here, the twisty, gnarly species grows well in the hot, dry Mediterranean climate, and can produce the bark layer used for cork for up to 200 years. Each tree can be harvested nine times after reaching maturity at 25 years.
Operating on such long time horizons, it is no surprise that Corticeira Amorim has deep roots. The multinational company has 4,000 employees and makes some 1 billion euros in revenue every year.
The cork from its trees now goes into some 30 products, many resembling in no way at all the cork one pulls from a wine bottle. According to the company, its cork is used for river cruise ship decking, a cork-concrete solution for the Lisbon Cruise Terminal, and the thermal heat shield for the European Space Agency’s Intermediate eXperimental Vehicle (IXV) re-entry spacecraft. Aerospace applications for NASA, Boeing, and SpaceX followed the IXV’s success. The company has even developed a 3D-printer-compatible material out of cork.
The innovations extend beyond construction and aerospace. “Developed to mitigate hydrocarbon spills into the oceans caused by large oil tankers, CorkSorb is currently used in numerous industries where oil leaks occur,” the company said. “Cork absorbs only the crude which can be reused later in other activities.”Tiny cork pellets that are a byproduct of cork production are also turned into a new filler for artificial turf sports fields. The company claims its natural shock absorption and frictional resistance means cork-turf fields see 40% fewer injuries than shredded rubber fields. Real Madrid uses Corticeira Amorim cork on its training fields.
For many of the cork oak woodworkers in the fields of Rio Frio south of Lisbon, or at the processing plant at Mozelos near Porto, the glitzy innovation in their ancestral craft is not always visible. Their days carry on much as they always have, an element of protection afforded by a firm breaking barriers with a truly special material.
