Hide defects costing Brazilian tanners ‘$1 billion per year’
President of the Brazilian trade association AICSul - Association of Tanners of the State of Rio Grande do Sul - has called on suppliers to the industry to exercise greater quality control, as avoidable defects were a major cause of lost revenue.
Speaking at a recent ‘Beef Symposium’ in São Borja/RS., AICsul president Cézar Muller put the total losses attributable to hide defects at around $1 billion per year. Of these, around 60% were avoidable, Mr Muller said, being related to cattle breeding and slaughter activities. If fewer defects were generated, everyone along the production chain would benefit, not just the tanners, he reasoned.
Mr Muller said that if defects were eliminated altogether, the average price paid for Brazlian hides would double to $60.00, in turn doubling the industry’s revenues to £2.1 billion a year.
“Adding value to leather means giving priority to quality, especially during the early stages of the process. Replacing the current volume of wet blue exported with crust would generate an additional $527million a year for Brazil. If we opted for finished leather, then the added value would rise to US$749 million per year”, he added.
Mr Muller singled out the Brazilian way of rearing cattle (extensive husbandry and late slaughter at around 42 months) for particular blame, stating that this resulted in an inordinately high number of defect such as parasite marks, cuts and brands in the wrong place. However, he was also mindful of the fact that cattle breeders did not earn much extra for higher quality hides. He said this was the one of the main reasons why Brazilian hides were generally considered of low quality, despite the country having the world’s largest commercial bovine herd.
Just 8% of Brazil’s total output of 34.5 million hides were classified as high quality in 2002, Mr Muller said. This compared with 85% of hides in the USA that were given a ‘Grade A’ rating.
