Coming Indústria e Comércio de Couros, Trindade, Goiás, Brazil
A facility set up by three brothers to process hides from Brazil’s centre-west region has become one of the country’s most important exporters of wet blue as well as an active and dedicated provider of help to the communities that surround it.
On a 50-hectare site, ten kilometres from Trindade, in the Brazilian state of Goiás, Coming Indústria e Comércio de Couros operates its main tannery, processing local hides to wet blue stage. In 2008, the company acquired a small finishing plant 10 kilometres from the footwear manufacturing city of Franca in the state of São Paulo, which processes 400 pieces a day, but the bulk of Coming’s wet blue hides, between 3,000 and 4,000 a day at the moment, go for export to all parts of the world.
Three brothers, Mario, Emilio and Márcio Bittar, are the founders and directors of this company. They started in 1982. Originally from the state of Minas Gerais, the family went west to Goiás when the brothers were still at school. “We lived in a very small town,” Márcio Bittar recalls, “and the education possibilities were few there, so we came to Goiânia when I was eight; we grew up here and are proud to say we are from here.”
At first the brothers rented a factory in nearby Nazario and ran their operation from there, salting hides in the beginning and then, in the 1990s, putting a wet blue operation in place. There were frustrations, Mr Bittar says, because improvements he and his brothers wanted to make were blocked by the owner of the site. The tannery’s present site became available in 2000 and the Bittar brothers snapped it up. Around 400 people work there, but the company has calculated that 1,800 people are directly dependent on the tannery for their daily bread. During the period January-August 2010, 9.5% of Brazil’s total exports of wet blue came from Coming. The company was the ninth biggest exporter of hides in Brazil in 2009 and the tenth biggest exporter across all sectors in the state of Goiás.
Raw material matters
Export manager, Rafael Mariño, explains that the hides from the 18–20 abattoirs that supply Coming are mostly from the Nelore breed of cattle, with its characteristic hump. Cross-breeds between Nelore and several European types of cattle account for about 20% or 30% of the raw material. Most come from heavy male animals, although lighter cow hides are often included in the lots the abattoirs deliver. In fact, the hides that go for finishing to the plant in São Paulo are mostly split cow hides because the footwear firms say the grain on this type of leather is better for their purposes.
“We have a good relationship with our suppliers,” Mr Mariño says. “We are in constant contact with them. Relationships are the most important thing. We have to visit the suppliers regularly and, of course, payment is very important to them. Sometimes, the abattoirs are inclined to ask tanners for payment in advance, but with Coming, they have known us for many years and they know they will be paid.” Attention to quality is high too. To help improve hide quality, Coming has been sharing with farmers a list of Ten Commandments [see technical section] that it drew up 20 years ago. The company’s aim in doing this is to show that if cattle have good grazing and a good balanced diet, the quality and size of the animals, and therefore of the hides, will improve. “Teaching farmers to do this was very difficult in the past,” says the export manager. “Now people are more switched on and I think we are all seeing the benefits.” With the same objective in mind, three Coming employees move around the main abattoirs the company sources material from to help, in the most diplomatic way possible, the packers’ people improve their cutting and handling of the hide.
Hide availability
Sourcing raw material of any quality is becoming trickier all the time. Mr Mariño says: “The supply of hides is dropping every year, even though demand [for leather] is increasing. In 2008 and 2009 we were producing 5,000 hides a day. Brazil’s meat industry, and hence the source of raw materials we use, has undergone considerable restructuring and I would say that there are now between 15,000 and 20,000 fewer good-quality hides coming onto the market every day compared to the numbers of only a few years ago. So the offer of raw material is now less and less.”
In Goiás, there are few rival tanneries, but there is competition because all of Brazil’s big buyers of hides have a presence here, dedicated to securing the state’s high-quality raw materials. Coming has considered trying to import hides from Venezuela, the US, Uruguay, Paraguay and so on, but the tax regime in Brazil makes this difficult. The reality of the situation, as far as Rafael Mariño is concerned, is that hides are going to continue to be more difficult and more expensive to source. As a result, he believes the price of leather is going to have to go up. “Slaughter is finite,” he explains. “Supply is limited, but demand is growing. Therefore, leather will become more expensive. There is a perception in the global market that Brazilian hides are cheap, but they are not any more.”
He goes on to explain that, a decade ago, farmers in Brazil were inclined to wait until an animal was five years old before sending it to slaughter. Today, stock goes to the abattoir at half that age, making it hard to imagine that Brazil’s livestock population will build back up to its previously high levels any time soon. Official slaughter statistics from the government’s statistics agency for the first quarter of 2011 show that the country’s abattoirs processed almost 7.1 million head of cattle during the three-month period. This represents only a very slight increase (0.2%) on the total for the first quarter of 2010. The figure for the corresponding figure in 2007 was more than 7.9 million head of cattle, but in 2008, this fell to 7.2 and the figure has not recovered. In the first quarter of 2009, it plummeted to 6.4 million. “The production system in Brazil has changed.” Mr Mariño continues, “and it’s impossible to increase slaughter. The supply of hides will remain more or less the same, and the price must go up because of the competition that exists to secure raw material.” He says Coming’s philosophy is to secure the best quality it can through the good, long-standing relationships it has had for many years with packer firms, even though it means paying a slightly higher price. “Prices have been pushed up; consumers and brands are going to have to accept higher prices,” he continues. “We know the price is not going to reduce now and we have to match our costs.”
He points out that Coming, like most tanners, would like to be able to negotiate lower prices for its chemical supplies, but, just as with raw hides, it is having to accept increasing costs in this area. However, Mr Mariño quickly points out that his company is happy with the quality of service it receives from its chemical suppliers. “They are always here, and are always testing new ideas,” he says. Machinery suppliers, whether Italian or Brazilian, are also frequent visitors.
Customer markets
Asia is the main market for the wet blue hides Coming produces, but it has clients spread all over the world. Some make finished leather for footwear, while others focus on upholstery leather for automotive and furniture applications. And there are customers on every continent. This diversification is deliberate; Coming came through the economic downturn at the end of the last decade in a strong position because it invested and carved out opportunities for itself in new markets when things became tough in other areas. There was a furniture leather boom when house sales in the US were high. It seemed natural to many consumers to buy leather sofas if they could afford to. Although the situation in the US has changed, Rafael Mariño believes consumers in other markets around the world are staying faithful to this. If they can afford leather furniture, they will buy it. “It’s the same with automotive upholstery,” he adds. “Once you’ve had leather in one car, you don’t want synthetic in the next.”
Wet blue imports are popular, partly because of the view in some countries that wet blue is bad news for environmental reasons. “This, too, represents an opportunity for us,” says Mr Mariño. “The number of beamhouses is reducing in places such as China and this means tanners there are going to have to import wet blue. Environmental issues are very important for leather producers. We welcome the opportunity to show that we can make a natural material while taking care of the environment. We are not doing anything to harm nature, and I think we have made great progress in promoting that. Certification from the Leather Working Group is one way in which tanners are able to do this. We have achieved silver status, and we think it proves we are a clean company. Everything we can do to get the message across is good.” ISO 9001 accreditation also helps.
He explains that, as with its suppliers, Coming has worked to build long-term relationships with its clients. Some customers have been buying wet blue from the company for more than 20 years. “When they start working with us, they stay with us,” he says. He accepts as positive the work non-governmental organisation Greenpeace has done to highlight links to the meat industry (and by extension to the hide and leather sector) from illegal deforestation of the Amazon rainforest. This came to a head midway through 2009 when a report connected finished leathergoods to the deforestation issue, which led big packer groups in Brazil to sign up to an agreement with Greenpeace and work on a new traceability system for Brazilian cattle. “Greenpeace is doing an important job,” says Rafael Mariño. “Maybe they exaggerate a bit, and they cannot ask the impossible, but they alert society to problems and if companies are in the wrong, they need to change.”
Adult learning
Proud though he is of what Coming has achieved, Márcio Bittar is equally pleased about two education projects that the company has established. About four kilometres from the tannery, beside a peaceful lake, there are two classrooms, equipped with audio-visual equipment, in which adult learning programmes take place for Coming employees. This began in 2010, and the numbers of workers volunteering to come for three hours before beginning their shift at the tannery has been steadily increasing. Some come to supplement the schooling they had as children; others are starting more or less from scratch to learn to read and write. The company lays on bus connections between the centre and the tannery and adult literacy specialists travel from Goiânia.
Children’s centre
Further away is the former favela (a familiar Brazilian word meaning shanty-town) of Mariápolis, which is five kilometres from the city of Trindade. The authorities used a site near Mariápolis for dumping rubbish and a small community of rag-pickers set up home beside it. This has now become a housing development for 300 families. Their homes are more permanent now, but it’s still blighted by poverty and other social problems.
In 2006, Coming set up an early learning and children’s day-care centre here, funding the entire project, including the building and appointing a dedicated team of education and health professionals, care assistants and a genial cook. Fifty local children aged between three and six attend, learning and playing in a healthy environment, eating breakfast, lunch and mid-morning and afternoon snacks, all free of charge.
Márcio Bittar admits now that he required a considerable amount of convincing before starting work on this project. The idea came from his two brothers, but he struggled to see how it could work. “I told them it was all right for them,” he recalls. “They both work in commercial parts of the business and travel much more than I do. I knew it would mostly be down to me to administer the children’s project.” They waited a year, but eventually got the centre up and running.
“The first week, about 15 children came,” Mr Bittar continues. “Word had gone round the community that we were going to do this, but the reaction was, ‘A children’s centre in Mariápolis? Wait and see. At the end of the month there will be a bill to pay.’ But there wasn’t. And a little later, some of the parents approached me and said, ‘So what is this really about, Márcio? You must be preparing to run for election or something.’ But of course I wasn’t. The numbers of children attending picked up week after week and soon we were full.”
Coming’s only motivation was to do good in the local community. The centre meets all the requirements of government inspectors, but goes further in making medical and dental care available to the children. The childcare that the centre provides allows parents in Mariápolis to go out to work in Trindade or even Goiânia and improve their families’ standard of living. At the same time, the project gives the children of Mariápolis a high-quality start to their school careers, helping them make the most of the opportunities available.
Brazil’s only fire brigade cadet band
In the wider local community, Márcio Bittar has also worked to help improve relations between the fire service, the police service and the local community. He explains that the prevalent attitude in many communities in Brazil is that the fire service “just puts out fires and the police are there to shoot people”. His aim was to show that there are good people in the emergency services who work hard for the overall protection and wellbeing of the community. “The local children are now able to join a cadets programme and I think it’s great that they can see, from the age of eight or ten onwards, that these organisations do good and, from their own point of view, offer them the chance of a good career. Relations between the police and the community are much better now, and the fire department in Trindade is the only one in the whole of Brazil with a band for the cadets. The children get to learn to play their instruments without paying anything.”
At the time of the Tannery of the Year visit the children from the fire service cadets force were out of town, having travelled 400 kilometres west along the Araguaia River to work on an eco-project, cleaning up popular camping areas, but also talking to tourists about the importance of keeping the river and the areas around it free from litter. Coming donated money to allow the group to buy T-shirts and sandals to wear as a project uniform.
For Rafael Mariño, these examples of work in the community reflect the care and attention that the owners of Coming give to their own workers. It provides transportation by bus between the tannery and the town of Trindade for people working on each of two shifts and there are regular social gatherings with food and music. “People know the bosses and can talk openly to them,” he says. “The people in charge here are very accessible, which makes it easy for them to get valuable feedback. They are always open to that, always open to learning more and to improving.”
