Double success for Kings International at Tannery of the Year

31/03/2016
Indian tannery Kings International carried off not one but two prizes at the 2016 Tannery of the Year Awards in Hong Kong on March 30.

Unnao-based Kings International, which specialises in making leather saddles, won the regional award for Asia excluding China. But a panel of judges also selected Kings International as the winner of the Tannery of the Year Innovation Award for 2016.

For several years now, the World Leather team has collated particular examples of innovation from tanners while compiling the Tannery of the Year reports. After picking out two ideas from each of the finalists, it asks a panel of knowledgeable judges (comprising previous Tannery of the Year winners, and completely separately from the judging panel for the main Tannery of the Year competition) to choose one of these examples as the recipient of the Tannery of the Year Innovation Award.

For the 2016 award, the idea the judges singled out as the winner was energy-free air extraction from drying areas in the Kings International tannery. Kings International managing, Taj Alam, described this second award as “the icing on the cake”.