Tannery of the Year: recap of regional winners
31/03/2010
The five regional winners of the Tannery of the Year Awards 2009 represent almost the entire leather-making world.
African winner, the Ethiopian Tannery Share Corporation (also the winner of the global award) is based in the village of Ejersa, two hours south of Addis Ababa. It processes around 60,000 sheep skins, 12,000 goat skins and 1,500 bovine hides a week, for fashion and sports gloves and for footwear and leathergoods.
Curtiembres Fonseca, from Lanús, on the outskirts of Argentina’s capital, Buenos Aires, was the winner for the Americas region, which encompassed tanneries from North, Central and South America. It has a capacity to tan up to 20,000 hides per week, sourcing mostly raw hides from the vibrant local meat markets (Argentineans consume an average of 73 kilos of beef per person per year). Most of the leather goes into the automotive supply chain, supplying leather for the seats in cars made by Honda, Audi, BMW, Ford, General Motors and many others.
In Asia, excluding China, the Tannery of the Year, PrimeAsia Vietnam, is a footwear leather specialist. It is a founder member of the Leather Working Group, the multi-stakeholder group that assesses the environmental performance of tanneries. It made 38.6 million square-feet of leather in 2009 and is committed to helping the brands that use its leather—Timberland, Nike, adidas and 50 other footwear companies around the world—convince consumers that shoes made from leather are better.
Tannery of the Year for China, was Simona Tanning, from Huizhou, Guangdong Province. The focus here, too, is entirely on footwear, with brands such as Timberland, Rockport, Nike, adidas, Merrell, Clarks, Deckers, Cole Haan, Ariat, Columbia and many others featuring prominently on the tannery’s customer list. This tannery is another prominent member of the Leather Working Group. An extensive facility covering 55,000 square-metres on the outskirts of the city, the Simona tannery produced around 22.5 million square-feet of leather in 2009.
The Tannery of the Year for Europe, Bridge of Weir Leather, from Scotland is another specialist in automotive leather, sourcing its raw material from local abattoirs to take advantage of the high quality of hides resulting from cattle that feed in the green fields of Scotland and Ireland. It has the capacity to process 6,000 hides a day and lists automotive big names including Saab, Volvo, Mercedes, Lincoln and Fisker as its main customers.
All of our Tanneries of the Year are 100% committed to corporate social responsibility, working as hard as they can to help the communities with which they share energy, water and other resources and making the least impact they possibly can on the environment. They are also sound businesses and operate on a stable and sustainable financial platform.
They are all wonderful examples of best practice in the leather industry.
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