Third seminar in COTANCE series takes place in Portugal
27/10/2015
Portugal’s principal leather-producing town, Alcanena,was the venue.
Following events in Bucharest in April (covering industrial issues) and in Paris in June (on social issues), the Alcanena conference covered the issue of trade.
A fourth conference, covering environmental issues, will take place in Glasgow on December 10, with World Leather’s chief executive, Simon Yarwood, moderating on a discussion on what the Tannery of the Year will look like in 2025.
At the Portuguese event COTANCE secretary general, Gustavo Gonzalez-Quijano, insisted that leather continues to create wealth in the EU.
“We still have around 20,000 people directly employed by the leather industry,” he told delegates, “but the number of people in the EU whose jobs, directly and indirectly, depend on leather could, at the outside, be as many as 1 million. We are processing almost 150 million square-metres of bovine leather per year, and more than 40 million square-metres of sheep and goat leather. Our combined turnover is €7.1 billion per year and we have a trade surplus of €1.2 billion.”
When the series of ‘Future of European Leather’ seminars is complete, a wrap-up event will take place in Brussels in February 2016.
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