USDA report highlights opportunities in Vietnam for US tanners
Running to nine pages, the report paints a picture of a rapidly expanding market for tanned leather, driven by the burgeoning demand for Vietnamese-produced footwear in Europe, the USA and Japan. In 1999, the country consumed approximately 80 million square feet of leather, and produced in the region of 230 million pairs of shoes and sandals, of which 80% was exported. In fact, footwear is now Vietnam’s fifth-largest export earner, with exports for 2000 estimated to be 265 million pairs.
Despite this high level of demand, in 1999, the Vietnam’s own tanning sector was capable of answering only some15% of the footwear industry’s total leather needs – the main reasons being a lack of raw materials, the poor quality of domestic hides and skins and a historically small domestic tanning industry that has been left standing by the expansion of the footwear sector.
The report makes a number of recommendations– the main one being that US tanners forge relationships not with the footwear manufacturers, but those organisations that are responsible for placing the orders. This is because it is common practice for footwear wholesalers to provide their own leather, or to specify the source of supply.
