Our story
Meet the team
Based in the beautiful High Weald area of East Sussex, the small but hard-working Recork team is united by a simple philosophy: that our flooring products should give back to the planet more than they take. Passionate about sustainability, we often partner with likeminded businesses. You might even spot our founder, James Scully, at sustainable events, discussing how we can work together to do the right thing for our struggling planet.
The giving tree
Our story begins with a remarkable tree, Quercus Suber, the cork oak. Cork is the outer bark of the tree and is 100% natural, recyclable, reusable and renewable. The tree has incredible regenerative capacity thanks to phellogen cells which stay active throughout its life, so across a 200-year lifespan, it can be harvested up to 15 times without damage. It simply regenerates after each extraction.
The Montado
The Portuguese cork oak forests, known locally as the Montado, occupy over one million hectares and produce over 300,000 tonnes of cork each year. The Montado has ancient origins, but was only cultivated in the 1800s to supply the bottle stopper industry. It is a cultural landscape, economically supporting more than 100,000 people through agriculture, cattle breeding, medicinal plant harvesting and hunting, in addition to cork production.
The harvest
The cork harvest is a skilled manual process using traditional axes rather than polluting machines. Harvesting requires deep knowledge of the forest and is carried out by expert descortiçadores, with skills passed down through family generations. Strict legal protections govern cork harvesting. Trees must be 25 years old, with a circumference over 70cm, measured 1.3 metres above the ground. Extracting cork planks is a six part process of opening, separating, dividing, extracting, removing and marking to show which year the tree was harvested.
The production process
Our raw planks are made by our partners in Portugal, using waste cork from bottle stopper production and cork from early harvests. The cork is granulated and then agglomerated into high density blocks, using heat, pressure and a bio-binder. The planks are then cut from the blocks, bevelled, and sanded.
After shipping to the UK, we use natural oils and waxes to colour the planks before finishing them with high performance, water-based protective coatings, specially adapted for cork. Our unique combination of surface finishes is key to Recork’s durability, performance and aesthetic.