Head of the world’s largest cork producer, Antonio Amorim, believes that Portuguese cork exports will reach â‚¬1 billion by 2017.

“I believed that Portuguese cork exports would reach €1 billion in 2020, but now I think they will reach that in 2017,” he told the drinks business during a meeting in Portugal last month.

Continuing, he explained that reaching €1 billion in exports would require Portugal’s stopper business to increase by €100m from €900m today, and, in terms of volume, that would represent a growth of 1 billion corks.

Helping cork reach this target is both increasing wine sales in markets such as the US and China, growing fine wine sales, a surging sparkling wine business and, he hopes, a shift to cork from other types of closure.

“I want us to grow by another 1 billion cork stoppers and I want to get that back from plastics and screwcaps,” he said.

However, he also said that other trends would help the cork business, with US and China both growth areas due to the expanding wine market in these countries, and the fact that both these nations have a preference for cork-sealed bottles.

He also mentioned the growth in sparkling wine demand worldwide, which are products almost entirely closed with cork, while stating Amorim’s dominance when it comes to sealing sparkling wines.

“We bought in 2007 and 2012 the two most important competitors we had in sparkling stoppers and now, without acquisitions, we are growing organically,” he said, referring to Amorim’s purchase of Spain’s Oller Group in 2007 and then, five years later, Trefinos, a holding company with six firms in Spain, France and Italy that produce sparkling wine stoppers.

Speaking about the top-end of the still wine business, he said that volumes were small but growing.

“Last year in Bordeaux they were bottling the 2013 vintage, and they had ... 

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