CORK INDUSTRY CONSOLIDATE TRADE SURPLUS

The trade balance of the sector in 2014 was 706 million. It climbed, year after year, pulled by exports. In 2018, it reached 843 million.

The cork industry, a sector where Portugal stands out as a world leader, has been consolidating in recent years a "strongly surplus" trade balance, a leveraged position in the increase of foreign sales. In the first eight months of 2019, the balance between imports and exports stood at 607.7 million euros, an increase of 1% compared to 601 million euros registered in the same period of 2018. From 2014 to 2018, the variation is positive by more than 137 million euros, according to an analysis by the report of the Office of Strategy and Studies of the Ministry of Economy, made by Walter Marques. As he emphasizes, the trade balance of cork products and their works has been registering "successively increasing annual balances".

Exports are the engine of this dynamic. In 2018, the sector exceeded for the first time one billion euros of foreign sales, when four years earlier it accounted for just over 841 million. Cork stoppers are the main product that the Portuguese cork industry places on external markets. According to data from APCOR (the sector's representative association), 72% of the production is for the wine sector and 25% is for building and decoration materials. The study from the Office of Strategy and Studies reveals that exports mainly focus on agglomerated cork and its works, where cork stoppers are included.

Although exports have been gradually increasing over the past five years, in the first eight months of 2019 they registered a residual break of 0.1% to 724 million compared to 2018. In this period, the Community market lost weight in the total sales abroad, worth 61.8% in contrast to the previous 72.1%. France, the United States, Italy and Germany were the main destinations, but the cork industry places its products in more than 130 countries worldwide. This sector weighs 1% in total Portuguese exports.

Although the trade balance is favorable to the domestic industry, the work of the Office of Strategy and Studies highlights that the annual growth rate of imports is higher than that of exports. According to the study data, the activity of cork and its works imported, in 2014, 135 million euros, mainly raw material, crushed, granulated and waste. However, already in 2018, this value increased to 219.8 million, in other words, an increase of 62.8% compared to 2014.

Between January and August 2019, imports fell by 5.7% compared to the same period of 2018, to 116 million. The main supplier, at a great distance from others, was Spain (66% of the total), followed by Italy (11.7%) and Morocco (10.3%), countries that, like Portugal, have vast areas of cork oak.

In the country, there are about 685 cork companies, employing over 8,300 workers.