Head of the world’s largest cork producer, Antonio Amorim, believes that Portuguese cork exports will reach €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.