An Eur2.3 million multinational research project, geared to reducing the environmental impact of the leather manufacturing process in the developing world, has been unveiled  in India.

The project was announced at the concluding session of last week’s 'Leather Research Industry Get-together’ (LERIG 2003) which was held in Chennai.  Eight laboratories from Australia, Germany, the UK, Bangladesh and India will participate in the five-year project, which will be largely funded by the European Commission. Each laboratory will be assigned its own set of objectives including finding replacements for sodium chloride and silica salts and investigating new ways in which waste water can be used in agriculture.

Organised by India's Central Leather Research Institute (CLRI) along with the major stakeholders in the industry, the four day event was primarily aimed at establishing a workable framework for the development of the Indian leather industry, so that its wider aim of securing 10% of the global market for leather could be realised. 

It was agreed that if meaningful headway was to be achieved, then European benchmarking practices in terms of unit value realisation, capacity utilisation, cutting values and the value gained/cost of material ratio would all need to be adopted.   The industry would also need to take on board European environmental practices, though tailored to take account of local conditions.  Although European emissions standards were seen as being realistic, those concerned with the disposal of effluent were not.   With this in mind, it was agreed that for the time being at least, development work should be concentrated on bringing improvements to the current practice of diluting tannery effluents, as opposed to trying to emulate European practice.  As part of this effort, a target discharge level of 2100 mg/l was set.  

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