German specialty chemical company Lanxess Deutschland GmbH has developed a new generation of finishing products for the leather industry: X-Grade is a new system that enables users to rectify small and medium-sized hide defects perfectly. According to the company, defects such as pinholes and cuts are eliminated with astounding success, which results in a higher cutting yield. In addition, the new technology, which is based on microcapsules, gives a much more uniform embossing pattern, which leads to a very natural-looking surface structure. The X-Grade system achieves its filling properties through the expansion of special patented microcapsules, which means it is essential to adjust the correct plating or embossing temperature.

Lanxess states that while there is an increasing demand for natural-looking leather, the quality of the raw hides is decreasing. However, with the X-Grade system, the quality of furniture upholstery leather, shoe upper leather and splits can be improved significantly so that the corrected grain leather has a much more natural appearance. At the same time, the embossing pattern is improved despite the use of fewer loading finishing layers. Therefore, the proportion of usable full grain leather is much higher, which means that tanners can sell more square feet of leather per hide and reduce the amount of waste.

The system can be applied by all the established application methods such as roll coating (direct or reverse), air, HVLP (high volume/low pressure) and airless spraying. It is applied in the prebottom or in the base coat, in combination with conventional base coat products.

At present, there are two products in the system. Primal X-Grade FCF is a preparation based on acrylic dispersions with special auxiliaries for prebottoms for full grain furniture upholstery and shoe upper leathers and Primal X-Grade MP is a universally applicable formulation, based on PUD/acrylic dispersions with special auxiliaries. In combination with additional binders, it is suitable for use in base coats for corrected grain furniture upholstery, shoe upper, bag and split leathers.