International Leather Maker

While at University back in the 1960s I was given a Little Red Book. “Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung” was a pocket-sized compilation of excerpts from Mao’s speeches and writings, which Chinese citizens were required to carry.  But quotes like “political power grows out of the barrel of a gun” were not easy to slip into student […]

Africa is our youngest and fastest growing continent. The African leather industry has huge historical significance and big potential for growth in the 21st century. Growth that is essential to provide the jobs that all countries with expanding populations must have. Tanning hides is mostly capital intensive but subsequent stages require increasing amounts of labour, in […]

Being embedded in a welcoming community and working in the right atmosphere is part and parcel of retaining the craft of tanning and producing fine products using leather. We see it in France and Italy with the luxury goods industry. In the wider leather industry, the craft still applies as all leather produces goods designed […]

Leather is at a crossroads. If it allows itself to be seen as a commodity, it will lose ground to synthetics. If it reasserts its craftsmanship, it will remain a valued, premium material. The headline quote is from a recent book – Abroad in Japan – when a factory owner moved his production 1,000 miles north in […]

I miss going to APLF. I was at the first back in 1984 and it coincided with my first trip into China when we went by train to visit a tannery in Guangzhou. Apart from the year my father died, I attended them all up to the pandemic. Trade fairs in the leather industry each […]

My resolution for 2025 for my ILM comments is to try and think a bit differently and remember that the more you learn. the more you need to learn. That element of reflection appears to be what is needed at this moment in the leather industry. After surviving the Covid-19 pandemic, there was every reason […]