ISA TanTec sells stake and hints at further growth and acquisitions
08/06/2016
On announcing the development, ISA TanTec, which has its headquarters in Macau and runs tanneries in China, Vietnam and the US, said existing shareholders will keep a substantial share in the company and that some members of its senior management team will invest alongside Navis and become shareholders too.
ISA TanTec founder and figurehead, Tom Schneider, will become the group’s executive chairman, while Uwe Hutzler, formerly managing director of the ISA TanTec tannery in Vietnam, will become the new chief executive.
Tom Schneider is originally from Germany and is a graduate of the now-closed Lederinstitut Gerberschule in Reutlingen. He left his homeland in 1981 and worked first in a tannery in Australia. In 1985, he moved to Taiwan, where he met his wife, Kris, with whom he moved to China at the end of the 1980s to set up the operation that became ISA TanTec.
Starting in 1989 with a local joint-venture partner (the only option open to him at the time), a total of eight people were involved in Mr Schneider’s first tannery. Within three years, it was making 1.3 million square-feet of leather per month. He relaunched on his own in 1993 and has operated a tannery in Guangdong province (in different locations) ever since.
He set up the business in Vietnam in 2008, again working at first with partners, and opened his own tannery there in 2010. The group’s third tannery, in Vicksburg, Mississippi, formally opened in 2015, with Mr Schneider describing the move as a boost to prominent footwear customers, including Wolverine, Deckers, New Balance, Keen, The North Face, Rockport and Timberland, who have an interest in increasing the number of US-made shoes they can offer the government and the public there.
On announcing the sale of a controlling stake to Navis, ISA TanTec said: “The partnership creates exciting opportunities for our company. It will give us the necessary means, both strategically and financially, to maintain, support and accelerate further growth. It also enlarges the possibilities for new acquisitions in the future.”
Image shows Tom Schneider speaking at the opening ceremony of his company’s third tannery, in Vicksburg, Mississippi.
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