The creativity of contract tanners
Contract tanners have been a fixture in global leather manufacturing for a long time and most people in the industry are familiar with the activity these producers carry out.
For bovine hides for the production of shoe upper leather, for example, it’s common for contract tanners to carry out wet-end operations on behalf of their partners and send the wet blue to those partners for retanning and finishing.
What has emerged in garment nappa production in Turkey in recent years is the mirror image of this. It’s common now for small-skin tanners who provide garment brands with leather for coats, jackets and other garments to carry out all wet-end processes in their own tanneries but then to pass the semi-processed material to specialist contract tanners for finishing.
Brand-facing garment leather suppliers have found this to be an efficient way to serve their customers. They can specify the types of articles they require from their partners but avoid the expense of smaller quantities of waxes and other specialist auxiliary products.
They also save on running their own specialist finishing operations and the cost of specialist equipment such as technology for automatic spraying, ironing-roll press or dry-buffing operations.
