Some 19th century entrepreneurs took the step of taking advantage of their close contacts with Spain and Portugal to help finance the setting up of large corkcutting factories there. The names Avern, Roberts and Rankin feature in this expansion. This surge of cork production abroad was one of the major causes of the gradual death of the British cork industry in the early twentieth century. Hundreds of men were employed in factories there, while the usual size of an English corkcutting business was under five men. Even when treadle-driven machines were being used in English workshops at the end of the nineteenth century, most firms employed less than twenty men.
The illustration shows part of the hand-cutters department at the Avern Sons and Barris’ factory in Silves, Portugal.
This foreign competition and the invention of the crown cap and the glass stopper put a strain on the industry, which polarised to the larger firms in London and Liverpool that could afford to make use of more advanced production techniques. Shortage of labour in the First World War also contributed to the industry’s demise, though a few firms carried on producing speciality wares.