Leading industry figure announces retirement
Leather chemicals manufacturer Buckman has announced that its strategic marketing manager for leather, Elton Hurlow, is to retire at the end of 2021.
Elton Hurlow has been leading figure in the industry for many years. He is a past-president of the International Union of Leather Chemists and Technologists Societies (IULTCS) and later became president of its commission for liaison and communications. He is the driving force behind the Global Leather Co-ordinating Committee (GLCC), a body that brings together to discuss matters of common interest the global leather industry’s three representative bodies: the International Council of Hide, Skins and Leather Traders Associations (ICHSLTA), the International Council of Tanners (ICT) and IULTCS. He also served as a member of the executive committee of multi-stakeholder body the Leather Working Group.
His colleague and successor as president of IULTCS, Buckman’s global innovation manager, Dr Luis Zugno, said Elton Hurlow has combined academic, professional, and commercial roles in a career in the international leather industry that has spanned more than 40 years.
He started as a research chemist at the South African Leather Industries Research Institute (LIRI) and then relocated to the US in the late 1980s, where he worked in various capacities at different tanneries run by the US Leather Holdings Group.
He joined Buckman in 1997 as global market development manager for the group’s leather division, based at group headquarters in Memphis, before moving to Europe in 2015 to become divisional manager of its business in Europe, the Middle East and southern Africa. He moved back to the US at the start of 2020 to take up his most recent role.
He has published a number of studies and articles on a range of topics and is a well known speaker at industry events. “We at Buckman congratulate Elton Hurlow on his outstanding career in the leather industry and wish him all the best in his retirement,” Dr Zugno said.
