UNIDO says chilled hides idea can work in Kanpur
26/07/2017
As part of a wider leather development project in the tanning clusters around Kanpur, UNIDO worked with tanner AKI India and with hide supplier Allana to develop improved ways of preparing fresh chilled hides and making them available to leather manufacturers. It examined the issues this part of the leather supply chain faces in India, including slaughterhouses and transportation and storage in challenging climatic conditions.
Ivan Král, industrial development officer for UNIDO for the leather sector, has said the project team members managed to resolve most of the logistical difficulties that arose and that the process they have come up with will now roll out more widely. If fresh hides can be made available to tanners in larger volumes, he pointed out, it will lead to a reduction in total dissolved solids (TDS) in wastewater treatment plants, something he said would be especially welcome in India.
“I am very pleased that UNIDO was part of this process,” Mr Král added.
Typically in India, hides and skins are preserved using sodium chloride, from flaying until the raw material reaches a tannery. At the tannery, the salt is usually washed out and this accounts for most of the TDS in tannery effluent. UNIDO has quoted an estimated 300 to 400 kilos of salt for one tonne of raw material.
The salinity in the tannery effluent can be removed only by reverse osmosis combined with mechanical evaporators. These methods are capital intensive and also expensive in regular operation and maintenance. Chilling the hides and keeping them at four degrees Celsius is an alternative method of preserving them, one that has been adopted in many countries.
UNIDO has now fostered a memorandum of understanding between Allana and AKI India, with Allana confirming its interest in selling hides under chilled conditions (using no salt for preservation) and AKI expressing its willingness to procure these hides. The project partners have calculated that this will reduce TDS in the tannery effluent by between 50% and 60%.
UNIDO has estimated that around 10,000 chilled hides per day (30% of processing capacity of Kanpur-based tanneries) can be made available to leather manufacturers in the clusters around Kanpur. Using this volume of chilled hides could reduce the salt discharge from Kanpur-based tanneries by up to 90 tonnes per day.
There are three tanning clusters close to the city of Kanpur (and to the River Ganges), at Unnao, Banthar and Jajmau.
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