Cork industry rallies with research programmes (Portugal)

As the cork harvest begins in the Montado forest in the Alentejo region of central Portugal, the cork industry is emerging from a decade of crises with a battery of research measures designed to meet the challenges of alternative closures. The inexorable rise of screwcaps and synthetic stoppers over the last ten years has been followed the global banking crisis and, in Portugal, the collapse of the economy, reports Decanter.