UNIC welcomes EUDR pause and presents IT platform
Italian tanning industry body UNIC presented a new IT tool to help tanners manage the bureaucratic burden of the European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) at the September edition of Lineapelle.
At the exhibition in Milan, it explained to tanners and other stakeholders from all parts of the world how the new system, Hides Eco Track, will work, ahead of a formal launch in December. It described the platform as a cloud-based, decision-support system for EUDR compliance for the leather sector.
Lineapelle and UNIC started working with partners to develop the system in April this year. Four pilot tanneries will take part in extensive testing in October.
Development partners included certification body ICEC, technology partner Terrasystem and UNIC’s counterpart for the Italian timber sector, Conlegno.
Vice-director, Luca Boltri, confirmed at the presentation that Lineapelle will make Hides Eco Track available for bovine leather manufacturers outside Italy to use as well.
The unveiling of the IT tool came the day after news broke in Brussels of another postponement of the regulation. Until this announcement, which still needs to be confirmed, the expectation was that EUDR would come into application at the end of this year.
Mr Boltri said: “We wanted to have something ready. We are following developments every day, but we don’t know what will happen with EUDR after the postponement. If we never need to use Hides Eco Track, we will be happy enough.”
He insisted that nobody is in favour of deforestation, just as everyone is in favour of sustainability, but he said that, in EUDR, the European Commission had published a regulation with “a lot of problems” in the text.
“This legislation is very badly written, and too many regulations like this have come too quickly,” he added. “This postponement has come about because of all the chaos this has caused. We would rather the European Commission introduced fewer regulations, but ones that are better thought through and better presented.”
