New COTANCE president takes the reins
Manuel Ríos Navarro has taken up the presidency of COTANCE on September 24. Mr Ríos is the chief executive of Spanish double-face and nappa producer Inpelsa.
He was confirmed as the next COTANCE president in September 2020, but owing to the restrictions that covid-19 placed on the industry and on the wider world, the representative body of the tanning industry in Europe decided to postpone his taking up the role until circumstances allowed.
Previous president, Andreas Kindermann, chief executive of Wollsdorf Leather, extended his tenure to a third year on an interim basis.
With many people in the European industry able to travel again and attend Lineapelle in Milan, COTANCE held its assembly at the fair on the final day, September 24, and chose this occasion to mark the handover of the presidency to Manuel Ríos.
The new COTANCE president said in an extensive interview for World Leather at Lineapelle that his main priorities for his two-year term as president would include maintaining and trying to improve further the quality of European hides and skins.
He said he also wanted European tanners to work collaboratively with leather chemicals suppliers. “Our customers are becoming more and more strict in the demands they make concerning the sustainability of the products we make for them,” he explained.
Mr Ríos then said he also urged leather producers to try to increase the level of knowledge people outside the industry have of leather. “There must be very few industries in the world that are already as sustainable as ours,” he said, “because, in the end, all we do is provide added value to a by-product from the meat industry. This is something that the wider public has to come to know and we have to try to impart that knowledge to them.”
The interview will appear in full in the October-November issue of the magazine.
