The last zero-waste obstacle
“Customers ask about sustainability all the time and we want to be able to tell them that we represent a clean industry.” Verônica Meurer.
The first leather manufacturer in Brazil to achieve diamond-level certification in the country’s Leather Sustainability Certification (CSCB), Courovale, is proud of this distinction, which it secured midway through 2021. However, the achievement marked no halt in its pursuit of sustainability improvements.
Tanning industry association CICB launched the programme in 2015 with the support of trade and investment promotion agency Apex-Brasil. This was after the idea had first come to light in 2013. Based on what CICB calls the three pillars of sustainability (economics, the environment and social responsibility), audits examining 173 different indicators are carried out by Brazil’s National Institute of Metrology, Quality and Technology (Inmetro), following which tanners can obtain bronze, silver, gold and diamond certification, depending on how many of the criteria they fulfil across the different audit categories. Provided they meet at least 50% of the indicators, they can earn bronze certification. Silver is for those meeting 75% and gold for those meeting 90%. To achieve diamond certification, the score has to be 100%.
Dedicated follower of fashion
Courovale achieved CSCB gold in 2018 and worked for the next three years to turn gold into diamond. Even now, according to Courovale’s commercial manager, Verônica Meurer, the quest for new ways to reduce its water and energy consumption, eliminate waste and safeguard workers’ health and safety goes on. The leather producer is based in Portão, near Novo Hamburgo, in the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul. It is a specialist in producing finished leather for the fashion industry, with expertise in embossed finishes to give crocodile, snake or metallic effects. “We don’t do nubuck, we don’t do fashion,” Ms Meurer explains. “We do leather that is on trend, two collections a year, for shoe and bag brands, and we have two people working for us in Italy to advise us about forthcoming trends.”
There is a bespoke service, too, she explains. Customers can come and ask for a customised finish, based on something they saw while travelling or an idea they have developed themselves, but most of its work is for brands. In the past year, 70% of Courovale’s leather has gone to finished product manufacturers in Brazil, even if, in some cases, the finished products themselves go for export. It ships the other 30% to Asia, to the manufacturing partners who make product there for international brands. Before the covid-19 pandemic, Courovale’s domestic-export split was closer to 50-50.
“In 2020, a lot of export orders were cancelled,” the commercial manager continues. “People did not know if they were going to receive hides they had ordered or if they were going to be able to work with them if the hides did arrive because they were not sure if their factories were going to stay open. We were able to keep in touch more easily with the factories around us here in Brazil. This was good, but we would probably prefer to have a return to 50-50 because the situation can change so quickly in the Brazilian market.”
Strength in diversity
Orders that the tannery receives are seldom large; its strength is in the wide range of different articles and different colours that it can offer. It buys in wet blue and has a partner, locally, who processes the hides to crust stage and cuts them into sides before finishing at its own premises in Portão. At full capacity, its output would be 55,000 square-metres per month. In the Brazilian spring this year (autumn in the northern hemisphere) it was running at about 60% capacity, although Verônica Meurer says she harbours hope of things picking up before the end of 2022.
To return to the pursuit of further progress, she shares that, until this year, and even with diamond CSCB certification, one last obstacle remained between Courovale and the goal it had set itself of achieving zero-waste to landfill. This was linked to the specialist work it does for the fashion market. For some years now, the company has been using digital printing technology to print some patterns straight onto leather. At current rates, it takes 35 minutes to print a single side. Ms Meurer estimates that about 20% of production is going through the digital printing equipment at the moment, but she recalls that, a few years ago, snake prints became exceptionally popular and 50% of all the leather Courovale was producing at the time was going through digital printing.
The last obstacle
For much of the rest of its output, though, it uses foils as the carrier for the patterns it imparts onto its leather. These foils were the last part of Courovale’s conundrum over zero-waste to landfill. Finding a home for the foils after use was hard, but it has completed the task and can now wear its zero-waste credentials with pride. “This matters,” Verônica Meurer insists, “but customers ask about sustainability all the time and we want to be able to tell them that we represent a clean industry. Our CSCB certification helps us do this, but it’s mostly in Brazil that we receive recognition for that. I would like it to have more recognition in international markets.”
She would also like to have more recognition of the value of leather and some appreciation of why it costs what it does. At the most recent Lineapelle New York, visitors to the exhibition, potential customers, asked her straight out which was Courovale’s “most sustainable leather”. She was able to show them a range of articles the company has produced using EcoTan technology from Silvateam. This involves the use of only natural products in the making of the leather, which will allow specialist partners to take the material back at the end of a finished product’s useful life for use in fertiliser production. “Customers are interested in this,” she says, “even if I think they would like us to have a discussion with Silvateam about making it more affordable.”
Rio Grande do Sul-based Courovale is a specialist in developing colourful finished leather for fashion-focused footwear and handbag brands.
All Credits: WTP.
