New Wave Leathers Pty Ltd has announced that major upgrade programmes for its two Australian wet blue tanneries at Melbourne and Gunnedah were proceeding faster than planned. The tanneries have been owned by New Wave since earlier this year.
New Wave has operated its Toowoomba wet blue tannery since 2000 and achieved world class quality levels by installing latest technology drums and associated systems including highly sophisticated computer programming that controls the tanning process.
Our aim is to replicate the Toowoomba process at the other two tanneries as soon as possible,” said Mr Robert Hein, managing director of New Wave.
We already have made big changes to the operations at Melbourne and Gunnedah and are seeing significant improvements in tannage and grading consistency. The speed of the changes means the improvements have been made much earlier than we had expected,” said Mr Hein.
New Wave is part of the Nippon Meat Packers Australia group of companies and was formed in 2000 to process cattle hides produced as a by-product of Nippon Meat’s Australian meat packing operations, which were previously processed under contract by other Australian tanneries. New Wave’s production has nearly quadrupled since 2000 and the great majority of New Wave’s production is now sourced from other Australian meat packing operators.
