00:00This is where the best corks in the world come from, the bark of a cork oak tree.
00:08Harvesting it takes precision and years of experience to master.
00:16Any cut that's too deep could damage or kill the trees, and most of these are over
00:20one hundred years old.
00:22Our main goal is to keep the tree alive for as many years as possible.
00:30More than half of the world's cork comes from Portugal, and most of the country's production
00:35comes from just one family-owned business called Coriceira Amorim.
00:40The 150-year-old firm uses cork in all kinds of products, even rockets.
00:47But just two decades ago, the industry nearly collapsed when a fungus in cork ruined the
00:52smell and taste of millions of bottles of wine.
00:58So what is this company, and the industry, doing to avoid another crisis?
01:02And why is harvesting cork such a tough job?
01:09The cork oak forests in Portugal have been protected under law for over 800 years.
01:15Unlike most commercial trees, cork oaks are never cut down and are only harvested for
01:19their outer bark.
01:21You have to respect the tree in the first place, so you have a certain moment in time
01:27where you are allowed to make the harvest.
01:31Harvesters need to follow strict rules to keep trees in good health.
01:34The trees can't be harvested until they're 25 years old and 70 centimeters in diameter.
01:40After that, they can only be stripped every nine years so the bark has enough time to
01:44grow back.
01:45And since the first two harvests don't produce the best cork, workers have to wait more than
01:4940 years to get the good stuff.
01:52Because every tree and branch are different, stripping can't be done by large machines.
01:57And it can only happen during the hot summer months.
02:01Workers like Casmiro have to harvest then, when the trees are most actively growing.
02:10Harvesters make about $900 a week, about five times more than the average agricultural worker
02:14in Portugal.
02:15It's hard work, but in the end, we see money at the end of the week or the end of the month.
02:22It's rewarding for us.
02:24But finding people interested in learning the craft has become harder.
02:28So in 2020, the company started slowly integrating custom tools to make harvesting faster while
02:34still preserving the trees.
02:37Like this small saw workers sometimes use to make the first cut, it has a special sensor
02:41that detects humidity and retracts before cutting too deep.
02:46And these clippers help open up the bark.
02:58Then workers peel the rest using axes that are specially designed for this job.
03:02The short handle and curved edge make stripping the bark easier.
03:06These strikes need to be precise.
03:08Any cut to the inner layers could expose the tree to infection or kill it.
03:18Workers paint the trunks with a number from zero to nine, indicating the year the tree
03:22was last harvested.
03:23A four means it was harvested in 2024.
03:27Cork trees can live up to 250 years and with proper care, regenerate bark their entire
03:32lives.
03:34The Whistler tree at 240 is the oldest on record, and it's been harvested more than
03:3920 times.
03:42Workers load the carved bark onto trucks and deliver it to Amarim's factory, which processes
03:47about 5,000 metric tons of cork bark a month.
03:51There, the planks are flattened between concrete blocks to dry out.
03:55After six months, workers boil them in water for an hour to soften them.
03:59The planks sit to dry again for a few days before they're ready for processing.
04:04Cork harvesting goes back 5,000 years.
04:06Egyptians used stoppers to seal jugs in tombs, and the Romans used cork in shoes and floats
04:11for fishing nets.
04:12The Romans and the ancient Greeks also used them to seal large clay jars, some containing
04:18wine.
04:19In the 1600s, England introduced stronger glass bottles to store wine and beer and started
04:25sealing them with corks.
04:27But it wasn't until the French champagne producer Dom Perignon switched to cork in the late
04:3117th century that sealing wine with corks became widespread.
04:35In Portugal, by the end of the 1700s, only small workshops in places like Lisbon made
04:40wine stoppers.
04:42But it wasn't big business here yet, and most of the country's cork bark was exported to
04:46France and Spain for processing.
04:48Portugal has always been the biggest cork producer in the world.
04:53Not necessarily the biggest cork manufacturer in the world, and that's basically what our
04:57family has changed.
04:59In 1870, Antonio's great-grandfather, who was also called Antonio, founded Amorim in
05:04a small workshop outside Porto.
05:07Like Portuguese cork in general, the company grew steadily over the next 50 years.
05:12They processed stoppers locally and sold them directly to vineyards.
05:15The family built their first big factory in 1922, the same year Portugal's cork exports
05:21doubled compared to the year before.
05:23In 1980, Portugal was the largest importer and exporter of cork, with Amorim claiming
05:29to process the most by the end of the decade.
05:31I think that we have in common a true passion for the product that we work with, cork, and
05:40that basically has kept the family very, very much connected with this business.
05:45Today, the company is the world's largest supplier of cork wine stoppers.
05:51In Amorim's facility in Santa Maria da Feira, people work side-by-side with machines to
05:56maximize the amount of material they can process.
06:00Workers start by sorting the planks by hand and inspecting them for thickness and quality.
06:06Only the highest-quality pieces are used to make natural, hole-punched stoppers.
06:11Imperfect bark is ground down to be used as a composite material for other products.
06:15More on that in a bit.
06:17The ideal piece has small pores and a good moisture level.
06:20Less than half of the harvested bark passes this test.
06:25Workers use their hands and feet to punch the stoppers out of the bark.
06:30Most of them can punch about 14,000 stoppers over their eight-hour shift.
06:34In 2014, the company started using robotic arms to speed up the process, along with automatic
06:41drillers that can now punch out about 35,000 a day.
06:45A series of imagers, like this x-ray machine, categorizes the stoppers based on quality,
06:51while another machine separates them using bursts of air.
06:54Finally, the stoppers are branded and personalized before they're shipped to more than 100 countries.
07:00In 2023, Amorim produced about 22 million stoppers a day.
07:05Cork makes such good wine stoppers because of its low porosity, which allows just the
07:10right amount of oxygen to pass through so the wine can develop complex flavors and aromas
07:15over time.
07:1660 to 70 percent of the cellar structure of the cork is air.
07:21That makes it a very light material, a very compressible material.
07:25That makes a fantastic insulator.
07:28That makes it really be impermeable to gases and liquids.
07:33These days, stoppers drive about three-quarters of Amorim's business, but in the early 2000s,
07:38the entire cork stopper industry almost collapsed.
07:43Cork bark naturally hosts fungi.
07:45But when certain types are exposed to chemicals in production, like chlorine, it kick-starts
07:50a process that creates TCA, a chemical compound that ruins wine, making it taste musty and
07:56moldy.
07:57And it's sometimes called cork taint.
08:00An outbreak of sorts started in the late 1990s, with around 5 to 10 percent of all wines sold
08:06tainted.
08:07Frustrated winemakers began looking for alternative closures, turning to plastic and aluminum
08:13screw tops.
08:14And the value of cork plummeted.
08:17By 2011, winemakers in New Zealand and Australia had largely ditched cork in favor of screw
08:22tops.
08:23And half of the wine in the U.S. was also using alternative closures.
08:29To save its business, Amorim invested hundreds of millions of euros in a research and development
08:34lab that could help the company screen and eliminate TCA.
08:38And it paid off.
08:39By 2015, less than one percent of the corks leaving Amorim had TCA.
08:43No war is won ever, but some battles have been gained.
08:48The lab also developed new products that could be made with bark unsuitable for high-quality
08:54stoppers.
08:55There are endless uses for cork.
08:57We continue research on what else can we do with cork that we have not done until now.
09:02Amorim now uses all of its by-products and cut-offs from the stopper process to make
09:06coasters, toys, and sheets.
09:10The word waste is not applicable to our industry.
09:14Here, we only talk about raw material.
09:17Even the dust or powder that might be generated from the production process, we use as biomass
09:25for our boiling systems.
09:28So 70 percent of our energy uses comes from our own biomass.
09:36And since 2008, Amorim's been buying used cork from supermarkets, turning that into
09:41new products, too.
09:42The company recycles about 200 million stoppers a year using a pretty simple process.
09:47The corks are loaded into a hopper and crushed into granules that can be used to make coasters,
09:54bricks, and other types of composite.
09:57We don't have so many industries in the world that can produce physically those many pieces.
10:04The only thing they can't be used for is high-quality stoppers.
10:08A new, growing area for the business is cork flooring.
10:13Because cork trees don't have to be cut down, the material offers an environmentally friendly
10:16alternative to hardwood.
10:18Thin sheets of composite made from ground bark are run through printers and lasers,
10:23which color and etch them with knots and grain.
10:26Workers inspect the sheets by hand and use tools to measure the consistency of gloss,
10:31color, and varnish.
10:33Today, Amorim sells its flooring to 80 countries.
10:36But perhaps the most exciting development is sending cork to space.
10:46Because it's a great insulator and lightweight, the material has been used in aeronautics
10:51since World War II.
10:53NASA started using it to make heat shields in the early 1960s.
10:58Today, both NASA and the European Space Agency source their cork from Amorim.
11:03I think the aerospace is probably the one that we'll be most proud of, because a natural
11:07material that has ticked all the NASA boxes on thermal shield insulation performance.
11:18Meanwhile, natural cork is also having a resurgence, in part because it's a renewable resource,
11:26decomposes naturally, and can be made into a range of products.
11:29With new technologies and new international customers, the Portuguese cork industry reached
11:34an all-time sales high of $1.3 billion in 2023.
11:40But making all these products depends on healthy, growing forests.
11:44Many of the trees Amorim harvests are over 100 years old, now living on less rainfall
11:49and warmer temperatures.
11:51All of these trees will die at a certain moment in time, and we don't have the baby trees
11:56coming up.
11:58So we need to plant more.
12:00Since 2023, Amorim has planted 300,000 trees.
12:04They plan to plant another 1.5 million in the next five years.
12:09The company monitors them closely, trying to identify which grow the fastest while resisting
12:14disease and drought.
12:15As soon as we find these champion trees, we need to multiply them and to make them available
12:22for the forest landowners to plant them in their fields.
12:26This is how committed we are to our industry, because the payback of this investment will
12:30be close to 24 years' time.
12:34Antonio is confident that after surviving world wars, heatwaves, and weird smells, his
12:39company is well-positioned to continue to adapt.
12:42Amorim has been growing as a company for over 154 years of its existence.
12:48Today we are basically at the peak of the company, but we believe that we still can
12:53grow much further in the future.
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