Ministry official acknowledges tanners’ concerns in Indonesia
04/06/2013
At the end of May, the Indonesia Tanners’ Association (APKI) called on the government to make it easier for importers to bring live cattle into the country and APKI president, Haryono Sutanto, said “a complicated bureaucratic procedure” had built up around hide imports, involving inspections by veterinary professionals that tanners have to pay for before material is released from quarantine centres.
In an interview in the days that followed, ministry official Elisabeth Ratna Utarianingrum acknowledged that many manufacturers in Indonesia have complained about the situation, but she said the government was having difficulty maintaining levels of expertise among its staff.
She said the Indonesian leather industry was currently importing 55% of hides (raw or wet blue) from overseas, principally from Australia, the US and Latin America. By her calculation, at current levels of production, Indonesian tanneries have an output of 2.4 million square-feet of bovine leather per year.
Using mostly local raw material, they are also producing 35 million square-feet of sheep and goat leather, but Ms Ratna said this was only 35% of maximum capacity.
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