France’s future
The president of Alliance France Cuir confirms that changes in farming in France may have wide-ranging consequences for the whole of the leather sector there.
Following our analysis in World Leather December 2024-January 2025 of the effects on the luxury leathergoods sector of a drop in the supply of calfskins, Christophe Dehard, has pointed to wider changes in raw material supply. Mr Dehard, the president of industry body Alliance France Cuir, says developments upstream in the supply chain are going to affect the whole industry in France and that tanners are going to have to adapt.
Speaking recently to specialist fashion media, he said that what is happening upstream in the supply chain, as the agricultural sector develops, will inevitably have consequences for the leather industry. The range of cattle that farmers raise in the green fields of France will be different, he says. More of the animals in the national herd of 16.3 million head (at the start of 2024) will be from dairy breeds, while the proportion of beef cattle will go down.
Overall, numbers have fallen; 30 years ago, France’s cattle population was 20.5 million head. However, the proportion of dairy cattle in the total has remained steady at between 40% and 42%, according to figures published by the country’s national association of cattle farmers. “We are going to see the dairy herd dominate the figures more and more,” Mr Dehard says, “and beef cattle will no longer be the bigger proportion. And what this will mean is a real change in the raw material we have to work with.”
Change matters
It may not be obvious to outside observers, he suggests, but this change matters because hide type determines the suitability of leather for particular market segments. Leathergoods factories are expanding in France. Hermès had eight facilities for producing bags in 2010. In 2024, the total increased to 23 factories, spread across nine regions of the country. It may become less likely that some of the leather from tanneries in France will be suitable for use in these factories. It may be that, in future, a larger volume of this leather is more suitable for shoe or furniture production instead.
“All of this will mean that leather manufacturers here will become more and more dependent on sales in export markets,” the president of Alliance France Cuir says. “And, in the background, our tanners will have to evolve too if they are no longer able to source the raw material they are used to. There will be change across the whole value chain.”
Specific requirements
He raises doubts about the future of France’s standing in the global market for leather. He points out that the focus there has tended to be on high-end customers, while producers in other parts of the world have manufactured leather that he describes as being more suited to day-to-day use.
He explains: “Our customers in the luxury sector have very specific requirements and want to source leather from calfskins or from select cattle hides. We continue to make this leather in France and we always will, but perhaps in the future it will not be in high enough volumes to meet all of the luxury sector’s needs.”
In addition to this, tanners will need to make up their production volumes with other materials. And if what they have to work with is more and more black-and-white hides from, say, Holstein-Friesian dairy cows, Mr Dehard says it may become difficult to sell all the resulting finished leather in the markets the industry in France serves at the moment. “We will have to try to export the leather we make from that material and hope to get a good price for it,” he suggests.
Ready to respond
High environmental and traceability standards provide a source of optimism. The president of Alliance France Cuir says the industry there began investing heavily in sustainability and in traceability a decade ago, and did so from choice. “We were not under pressure to do this when we did it, but what we have in place as a result puts us in a good position to respond to the requirements that exist now,” he observes, insisting that these high standards and a focus on quality are what can keep leather from France at the top of the pile.
He adds: “We certainly won’t be able to compete on volume because France’s weekly cattle slaughter is 42,000 head, much lower than in the US or Australia. Volumes in Asia are increasing, too, especially in China. China has imported European cattle, including French breeds, and it is developing its cattle herd. In terms of volume, we are a small player. And if cattle breeds are the same the world over, the hides on offer from all these places will be similar. Therefore, it is on quality that we must compete.”
Open dialogue
To keep quality standards high, he thinks more dialogue and co-operation among suppliers and buyers at all stages of the supply chain is going to become a necessity. “One of the real challenges we face is that we are all going to have to get to know one another much better,” he explains, “because the leather industry is not just the companies that make and use leather. You cannot separate leather production from meat production, and you cannot separate either of those from cattle farming. We are going to have to understand each other better than we do at the moment. The same word can mean different things at different stages of the production chain, so we have to learn to interpret each other’s vocabulary and understand each other’s needs.”
There is already a meeting point for these different industries, the abattoir. But Christophe Dehard’s view is that good conversations are going to have to take place at all stages of production. It has taken a decade for some platforms for dialogue to get going and these are becoming more commonplace, he accepts. For the most part, though, these conversations have taken place in the private domain and he wants something much more open to develop, for the good of all the players involved.
Buyers from the luxury sector in France have specific requirements when it comes to leather.
Credit: Première Vision
