Stahl CEO calls on tanners to embrace new technology

25/09/2015
Stahl CEO calls on tanners to embrace new technology
At the end of an event to celebrate the sixtieth anniversary leather chemical manufacturer Stahl’s move to its current headquarters in Waalwijk in the Netherlands, and the opening of a new centre of excellence for the automotive industry, chief executive, Huub van Beijeren, told World Leather he wanted the companies that buy leather to hear directly about the innovations his company is working on.

“We want automotive companies and luxury brands to find out about what we are doing he said and that’s what we hope to achieve with this new centre of excellence,” he said.

Mr van Beijeren said tanners will be able to benefit from visiting the centre too, but he said he sometimes has the impression tanners are reticent about taking on new technologies. “What they’ve always done for their automotive customers works,” he said, “so why change? They fear that if they change, the new technology may not work as well as the old.”

Image shows Huub van Beijeren (left) in conversation at the Stahl event with Professor Ferdinand Dudenhöffer of the university of Duisburg-Essen.