Portuguese Company Turns Cork Wood into Limitless Material, Even to Insulate Spacecraft

Stacks of harvested cork oak bark – credit, Carsten Niehaus CC 3.0. via Wikimedia In Portugal, a 150-year-old business making corks is showing that it’s absolutely possible to teach an old dog new tricks.

Having cultivated cork oak trees since the time of the monarchy, Corticeira Amorim have popped open the potential of this humble material, transforming it into a sustainable piece of sophisticated technology that can line the deck of a cruise ship, and even insulate a space ship. Cork oak forests are quite the unusual sight, and the plantation at Herdade Rio Frio is one of the largest planted cork oak forests of them all.

First reported by Good News Network.