The municipality of Silves publicly regretted the closure of the Amorim Corticeira unit, located in Vale de Lama, in the municipality of Silves, whose industrial production of cork insulation agglomerates will be discontinued next June.
In a statement, the municipality claims to have received the news with “sadness and desolation”, stressing that the company’s decision is based on economic and market reasons, such as demanding problems, raw material costs and international tax instability.
According to the municipality, “the continuous decline in the search for cork isolation clusters, because they are more costly than other alternative products in the market, without evidence of inversion of this trend in the coming years, combined with the increase in the costs of the raw material, from the mountain range, and combined with international instability regarding the tax export taxation, made the decision to prevail the decision. Closing based solely and exclusively on a criterion of economic and market rationality ”.
The Chamber of Silves ensured that it has immediately sought clarification from the company about the future of the 31 affected workers. The municipality reveals that the representatives of Corticeira Amorim assumed “the commitment to accept the transfer of workers to the manufacturing unit of News, if any worker so wishes it” and that, in the case of work cessation, “the attribution of monetary compensation double the amount provided for by the indemnity law” is foreseen.
It has also been assured that “the houses of function will be available to workers and their families who reside there, until other and better solutions that satisfy all stakeholders are found.”
Despite the company’s advanced guarantees, the Municipality of Silves expresses itself “restless with the 31 workers” of the production unit and is fully available to, within their legal skills, to provide them with all possible support in the search for the best solutions for their future ”.
The municipality also recalls that it has developed efforts since the end of 2021 to avoid this outcome, having led and mediated “at least 16 meetings of a long participatory and constructive process, which integrated the representatives of Cortice Amorim, the CCDR-Algarve and other direct interested parties”, with the objective of compatible the factory to compatible with compliance with the legal requirements and the adoption of mitigation. of air pollution.
In the same document, the Municipality stresses that the Silves Unit has been, in the last four years, “the one that more attention and investment has deserved from the Amorim Group”, namely with regard to the improvement of working conditions, compliance with the legislation in force and the adoption of environmental recommendations.
Still, it notes the municipality, this effort could not resist “the abrupt break of new orders and consequent reduction in factory billing levels.”
The municipality of Silves ends the note with a resilience message, stressing that “the strong connection of the city of Silves to the transforming industry of cork is far from over.”
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