The Cork Museum in Silves will reopen on July 4th, after being closed and deteriorating for 16 long years. This assurance was given to Sul Informação by Erik de Vlieger, a Dutch businessman who has lived in the Algarve for several years and who, in April 2025, purchased the complex of the former Fábrica do Inglês (English Factory) and the museum’s movable collection.

In an interview that took place at the Cork Museum, amidst the antique machines that constitute one of its attractions, the businessman admitted that, when it reopens in just over two months, the museum structure “will not be perfect. But if we are waiting for everything to be perfect, another year will pass. And that cannot be.”

Erik de Vlieger explained to our newspaper why he became interested in the fate of the Fábrica do Inglês (English Factory) and the Museu da Cortiça (Cork Museum), both closed since 2009 when the Alicoop/Alisuper Group, which owned them, went bankrupt.

“I’m a businessman. But sometimes in life, we encounter something that makes business take a backseat. I know Silves very well because I’ve been coming here for 15, 20 years. And every time I passed by the English factory, my heart bled. I couldn’t accept that it was all closed and deteriorating.”

Therefore, he recalled, “I tried to find out what was happening and discovered that there were some owners outside the Algarve who didn’t care about anything, neither the museum nor the beautiful buildings; they let it all deteriorate. They had funding from a large bank in Lisbon. But the bank didn’t do anything either. The government also didn’t do anything to save the Fábrica do Inglês. Because, in Lisbon and Porto, they think: this is just the Algarve, there’s no culture there, it’s not interesting . So, as the years went by, I got angrier and angrier. And when emotion gets involved, the business goes away. So I decided to get involved. And the first thing I wanted to do was open the museum and give it back to the community.”

The Dutch developer adds that he also wants to install “the headquarters of my companies” in one of the buildings of the English Factory. But he also wants to “build a beautiful hotel here” and “some apartments.” But let’s move on.

Despite risking the purchase of the Fábrica do Inglês complex because of the “anger” he felt at seeing it all closed and deteriorating, Erik emphasizes that he doesn’t want to “lose money. I don’t think I’ll make much money here, but I also don’t want to lose money. I think someone had to do it. This purchase was born of emotion, not reason.”

Erik de Vlieger’s first visit to the complex in Silves showed that “most of the buildings were in a deplorable state. The roofs were leaking, the old doors and windows were rotting. Everything was in terrible condition. But then we went into the museum. And the museum, strangely, is very well preserved inside. I was very surprised by that.”

“So, in Carvoeiro Branco and Antrix, we decided that, since the Museum wasn’t as bad as we feared, we would find the experts so that, together with our team, we could reopen the Cork Museum.” …

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