One of Italy’s most prominent leather manufacturing groups is celebrating  a series of recent achievements on its path towards embracing circular-economy principles. 

Arzignano-based leather manufacturer Gruppo Dani is claiming a world first. It has achieved certification under the ISO/IEC 17033:2019 standard, which covers companies’ ethical claims and the supporting information with which businesses have to back up these claims. Gruppo Dani says it is the first leather manufacturer in the world to achieve this milestone but that it is also an accolade for its supply chain partners.

The group says ISO 17033 certification will provide its customers with reassurance that all the hides it processes come from farms that raise livestock for food purposes only. It says this has confirmed Gruppo Dani’s commitment to the circular economy because it confirms that its work is based on “ennobling a by-product from the food industry that would otherwise go to waste”.

Chief executive, Giancarlo Dani, says he has modelled the company’s commitment to sustainability on making sure every phase and every supplier in the value chain are part of the overall effort. He speaks highly of joint projects in which Gruppo Dani has worked with other companies in the Veneto leather cluster to help operators learn and improve together, helping the wider Italian leather industry to stand out. “It’s satisfying to see that we are making a concrete contribution to a better world,” he points out.

How it started, how it’s going

He often talks about the importance of the leather cluster that has Arzignano and Chiampo, in the province of Vicenza, at its core. Mr Dani explains that leather production took off there soon after World War II. The local leather industry now has 875 production sites in the area and employs a combined total of 11,500 people, making up more than 20% of all of the manufacturing jobs in this part of Italy.

Gruppo Dani is one of the fruits of that boom. The chief executive explains: “The business started in 1950, through the efforts of my father. He worked in agriculture, but he acquired a house in the centre of Arzignano with a courtyard at the back and he began making things with his hands while he was sitting out in the courtyard.” As the family grew to number nine children, becoming what Giancarlo Dani describes as “a typically large Veneto family”, turning his ability to make things into a business became an economic necessity for his father. And now that business has grown to be one of the most important in the global leather industry.

Raw material origins

Other recent milestones include ICEC TS SC 410 certification, which is awarded by Italy’s quality certification institute for the leather sector, ICEC, for good practice in raw material traceability. Gruppo Dani has received a rating of ‘excellent’ from ICEC for this aspect of its supply chain. As part of its submission for certification under ICEC TS SC 410, the group presented “precise and complete mapping” of the origin of the hides it sources, identifying the slaughterhouses and farms where the material originates.

This analysis shows that 35% of the hides the group uses are from Italy, with 21% coming from Spain. Germany is the next biggest source with 9.5% of the total, followed by France with 7%, Poland with 6.5%, Denmark and Norway with 4.5% each, Ireland with 3.5% and the UK with 1.5%. This makes Europe’s contribution 93% of all the hides the group uses. The remaining 7% comes from North America, 4.5% from Canada and 2.5% from the US.

Sourcing from these origins is one of the elements of the group’s strategy that makes it possible for Gruppo Dani to produce high-quality leather for a wide variety of applications. The chief executive says it is obvious to him that farmers and the people who work in abattoirs in Italy and throughout Europe, in particular, are committed to high standards because this shows in the quality of the hides that his company buys. “We are practically on the doorstep of many of our suppliers,” he says, “and this is helping us make this a circular-economy activity.” By-product from the local food industry is upcycled locally by skilled people, creating jobs and wealth.

High demand

Giancarlo Dani can recall working in the past with poor-quality, dried-out, salted hides that had travelled thousands of kilometres before reaching Veneto. Now, in contrast, he says: “We now receive many of our hides the same day as the animal goes to slaughter. We receive them from abattoirs that are, perhaps, 100 kilometres away at most. These hides go straight into the drums and that means we don’t even need to salt them.”

After his teams of leather technicians and their colleagues across the Veneto cluster carry out their work, the resulting finished leather is what he calls “a product of great excellence”. And it is a product that is in huge demand among high-profile brands for use in their bags, shoes, cars, furniture or belts.

Downstream partnerships

Gruppo Dani’s sustainability efforts also include downstream supply chain partnerships with some of these brands. One success it celebrated recently was an agreement under which accessories brand Montblanc became the first company to sign up for a carbon emissions offsetting programme that the leather manufacturing group has established.

The two partners have calculated that Montblanc should offset 200 tonnes of CO₂-equivalent to compensate for the environmental impact of leather it sourced from Gruppo Dani in 2020. They have not shared the full details of this calculation, but Montblanc chief executive, Nicolas Baretzki, says he likes the idea of compensating for emissions now and using the figures as a further driver for “progressively reducing emissions”. They will aim to do this through, for example, research and development and process innovation.

Offsetting is based on the Clean Development Mechanism, a mechanism provided by the Kyoto Protocol that allows companies to offset the emissions they create by purchasing credits to finance sustainable projects in developing countries, with one credit compensating for one tonne of CO₂-equivalent. The money from the purchase of credits is invested in projects approved by the United Nations. In Montblanc’s case, the credits it buys will help fund a renewable energy project in Guatemala. 

Meat companies in Italy supply 35% of all the hides Gruppo Dani sources. Some are so close to the leather manufacturer’s operations that the hides arrive on the day of slaughter without the need for salting before going into the tanning drums.
Credits: Gruppo Dani

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