Cambios en la localización de la industria corchera mundial. Una perspectiva histórica

Resumen:Este artículo aborda los cambios de localización de la industria corchera desde mediados del siglo XVIII hasta la actualidad, proponiendo los factores explicativos que están detrás de ellos. Se presenta como un estudio de historia económica para cumplir dos objetivos. Primero, entender mejor los cambios que se están produciendo en la actualidad en el negocio corchero mundial. Y segundo, tener un patrón de comparación en el análisis de los procesos de deslocalización industrial de ramas intensivas en mano de obra y con una gran importancia de la materia prima en la estructura de costes, rasgos característicos de la industria corchera.Abstract:This paper analyzes the changes occurred in the world cork industry location since the mid-seventeenth century to the present, proposing a coherent explanation of them from the existing literature and previous research. All with a dual purpose: first, to better understand the changes that are occurring today in the world cork business, which are leading to the concentration of industrial activity in the center of Portugal, near the large supply sources of raw material; and second, to have a standard of comparison in the analysis of the industrial relocation processes for intensive in workforce branches and with great importance of raw materials in the cost structure, both characteristics of the cork industry. Besides being a study of regional economics, this research is presented as an economic history study because of its long-term perspective, since it is analyzed the extended period of time between the birth of modern cork industry, in the mid-seventeenth century, and today, fragmenting this chronological analysis in 4 homogeneous stages in terms of cork manufacturing location. These stages correspond to the initial development of the cork industry in France until the first third of the eighteenth century, the first one; with the expansion of manufacturing to Catalonia and other parts of Europe between the 1730s and late nineteenth century, the second stage, in which there was an indisputable absolute hegemony of Catalonia in the world cork business, despite the high degree of internationalization acquired for this one in this period; with the rise of cork manufacturing (especially of agglomerated cork) in the not cork-producing developed countries in the first third of the twentieth century, the third one, in which the Catalan hegemony in the business ceased to be absolute to pass to be relative; and finally, with the rapid rise of Portugal to the position of cork industry leadership in the world since the 1930s until today, coinciding with the decline of manufacturing in Spain after the Spanish civil war, and with the abandonment of the manufacture of this commodity in the not cork-producing developed countries in the second half of the twentieth century. From a methodological point of view, this research has an emphasized qualitative character based, on the one hand, on the extensive literature that has analyzed in recent years the secular trends of world cork business from its birth until today, and on the other one, in the fruitful theoretical framework of industrial location. This is the reason why in the paper we part from a review of the contributions existing from the classical theory of industrial location up to the most recent developments concerning to the processes of industrial relocation, passing through the contributions derived from the new economic geography. With this framework we aim to give a theoretical support, but also empirical, to the explanation of the changes occurred in the location of the world cork industry, which are presented using the known push-pull method, consisting in highlighting the push and pull factors associated with the different locations, which finally determine the location decisions of firms. With regard to the above, and in addition to give a great explanatory importance to the classic location factors (especially to the proximity to raw materials and major centers of consumption, as a way to minimize transport costs, and also to the existence of low wages), we find that, in a business traditionally characterized by low technological intensity, as cork one, the few radical innovations that have occurred eventually always have led to a new stage from the point of view of industrial location. It was what happened, for example, with the discovery of agglomerated cork in the early twentieth century (which expanded production worldwide), or with the expansion of synthetic substitutes for cork that occurred from the second world war onwards (which shook the world cork geography restricting it, again, to the old continent). Thus, the recent emergence of so-called “technical corks”, on one hand, and the higher qualitative requirements associated with manufacturing traceability and cork certification (increasingly demanded by the markets), on the other one, are implying new ways of organizing production in the cork industry that are leading to a new stage in the international location of it, which has not yet been profiled. A new stage, where some locations (as the center regions of Portugal or the Maghreb countries) are better situated to be the new industrial centers, to the detriment of other areas with a long cork industrial tradition as Extremadura and Andalusia, in Spain, the latter where the cork manufacturing is on the verge of the disappearance.