Leather Technology

Leather technology is ina period of change.  For 100 years chrome tanning has been dominant and for the last fifteen we have been searching for a better way. It looks hard to find and we can expect chromium, which is still dominant, to remain so for a long time. The big development has pushed into the automobile industry where chromium has been displpaced in a lot of car companies and the non chrome leathers have been found to have better hydro-thermal stability. But non chrome leather with one or two exceptions is genreally not as good as chromium and cannto yet match its technological performance. 

Yet as any technology passes on to a new level you have many options, some god and some bad, being developed at the same time and often it takes twenty or thirty years for a new dominant process to emerge. So what is happening in leather right now is quite typical and the only thing we expect is to see it the last fifteen years to be reduced as modern development methods and communications tools speed up the process.

But all this is happenig at a time when environmetal issues and compliance are ever more important, when REACH has added to the cost, and when trend has gone into the fastest decline we have ever seen.

So getting the mix of yuor innovation right is important. Yuo have to balance long term fundamental imporvements with short term seasonal ones of colour and fashion. You have to decide where to strike a balance between clever technology and what the final customer can see as a real feature and benefit.And you do need innovation as textiles, synthetic leather types and plastics are all encroaching and getting better aesthetically and technically.

Technology means considering all these things:

the environment

innovation

end of life

efficiency of process

and in all this what you do in house and what you source externally in terms of skills, technologies and competences you need

Getting your tecnhology strategy right is a very big deal