Biotech firm to develop new-generation bio-stimulants from leather scraps
Vicenza-based biotech company ILSA has announced that it will acquire 120,000 of leather trimmings over the next three years and transform the material into bio-stimulants for agriculture.
ILSA, one of the partners in the ‘Green Leather Industry for the Environment’ project, which ran from 2014-2017, has said the new products will be suitable for use in organic farming and will be “in perfect alignment with the principles of the circular economy”.
Company president, Paolo Girelli, explained that ILSA will take scraps and trimmings from a number of tanning clusters around the world. He said 120,000 tonnes of trimmings will produce more than 90,000 tonnes of biostimulants.
Already, ILSA is transforming around 85,000 tonnes of tanning waste per year to make solid and liquid protein hydrolysates rather than let the material be discarded, which it has said would have “a disastrous impact on the environment”. Its technology processes allow it to transform the waste, which is rich in amino acids, into special, high-performance agricultural inputs with a very low environmental impact.
It now wants to use patented processes to develop a new generation of bio-stimulants which, when placed close to the roots of plants, will activate microorganisms present in the soil.
