Tanners meet at Reutlingen
The 29th annual meeting for tanners was held 5-7 March 2002. This year the topic for presentation and discussion was post-tanning processes. The event was attended by 181 participants from 17 different countries, representing major companies from Germany, Centre and Northern Europe, and North and South America.
One of the special features of these meetings is the level of involvement of the participants, being mainly tanners and users within the leather manufacturing sectors. The 30 minutes allocated for each speaker was consistently matched with an equal time devoted to questions, comments and discussion, with very open exchange of information between the participants.
14 technical papers were presented. The topics covered included: storage, handling and application of leather chemicals, new developments and studies for improved dyeing, new systems to meet today's fatliquoring and waterproofing needs, and new developments in retannage.
The meeting was also supported by the Verein fur Gerberei-Chemie und-Technik (German tanners and chemists technical society), and coincided with the annual VGCT general meeting. The society has recently been registered at Reutlingen, and at the annual dinner event the annual award for Scientific and Technical Performance was awarded to Otto Sauer. Recently retired as managing director of Moller Werke GmbH, Sauer provided the first example of tannery restructure into contract tanning of wet blue, wet white, dyed crust and finishing in Germany.
The subject matter of the next LGR seminar will be finishing and is tentatively arranged for 18-20 March 2003.
