Bangladesh breaks ban on wet blue exports
The Bangladeshi government has broken with more than 30 years of policy and begun allowing ten tanners in the country to export wet blue hides.
Wet blue exports have been banned by Bangladesh since 1990 in support of the domestic leather manufacturing sector, but the government announced last year that it would consider allowing some tanners to ship wet blue in the weeks following the Eid al-Adha festival to alleviate the problem of large stocks of hides building up and of many hides going to waste.
It said it would consider tanners’ requests to export semi-processed hides on a case by case basis.
Celebrations at the time of Eid al-Adha, the Festival of the Sacrifice, include many families slaughtering cattle, sheep or goats. They consume one-third of the meat at their family celebrations and give the rest to the poor.
At Eid al-Adha this year, with the main celebrations taking place between July 21 and July 23, cattle slaughter in Bangladesh exceeded 9 million head. So far, ten tanneries have received permission to export wet blue and semi-processed hides have already been shipped from Bangladesh to China, South Korea, Vietnam, Italy, Spain, and Germany.
