January 7, 2025

Time to consider the long term

Welcome to the new quarter century. There have many recollections of 2024, some very moving, and even more predictions about 2025, but this is the moment that tanners and our leather network friends should all be considering the world in 2050.

It is a year that those of my age are unlikely to see, but one in which our children and grandchildren will be deeply immersed. Strategies put in place now will still be having an impact. New buildings constructed in the next few years will likely still be standing, and machinery will have set the direction for the middle of century.

The future of leather has two aspects. What we as tanners do and what those around us do. For the first we need to be brilliant – more of the same will not see the leather industry to the mid-century. There are too many challenges. And although useful crying wolf about plastics and talk of educating consumers will not be enough.

The future requires deep thought

Tanners must raise their game. Get involved in research, get past chromium, look fundamentally beyond the way leather has been made in the past 60 years. It involves much greater research, certainly, but more than that it requires sitting back and thinking things through at the top level. Some of our top companies have grasped this, plus a few individuals who are not always understood, so it is an internal battle we must fight harder.

Leather is dependent on the end user markets including footwear, leather goods, gloves, garments and upholstery for transportation and furniture. Luxury is an ill-defined segment that sits across the top of it all, consuming big amounts of the best raw material while playing a big part in discarding the rest. Although a diminishing sector for leather, current wars have reminded us that the military remains a category.

In my last comment in December, I noted the huge boost the use of the horse gave to leather over many centuries. Tanners produced specialist leathers for different items to ensure maximum compliance with the best performance characteristics, segmenting the hide accordingly and adjusting the processing. Users were shown how to look after the leathers so they would remain reliable and functional over many years. Given the known science this was advanced work, just the template we need now in a world where society is changing quite fast as demonstrated through demographics, urbanisation and transportation. Today’s hide segmentation is largely about convenience, not performance, and completely new leathers will be required.

The past 25 years gave access to historic data in volume on a smart phone, hardly conceivable in the year 2000. Something even more powerful is happening with artificial intelligence. It will transform how even the leather business is managed in 2050. It is already changing life today.

While we contemplate these developments and concern ourselves with current geopolitics and wars investment and planning for 2050 must consider changes in the climate. While politicians bicker about whether this is a consequence of accelerated human activity over the last 150 years or just “weather” the change in atmospheric CO₂ continues relentlessly and it already appears that the 1^oC mark has been passed, setting the trajectory for what looks like an accelerating trend.

We observe this with severe weather events and heat stress with workers and animals, including livestock. Calculations from The European Environment Agency says that much of Europe will now surpass a 3^oC by 2050 so the EU has started stress testing vulnerable infrastructure such as railways. Since historic trade required cities to be built on rivers or the coast many major ones, including those currently exporting most of the world’s oil, will be underwater with a 2^o C rise, expected globally by 2070 but likely in many places even before 2050.

India first?

Analysts have reduced economic forecasts for India as it starts to be impacted by water shortage, extreme heat impacting the working population, flooding and sea level rises. So far, India has shown little evidence of an ability to respond to these big challenges. It could be the first indicator of the impacts on the leather industry giving guidance about livestock and manufacturing, given its sizeable industry and high level of vertical integration.

Technological solutions are available to well organised tanneries for most areas so it is the supply of raw material which must be of most concern to tanners. And this demonstrates how future planning feeds back current action. If raw material supply for making leather is going to become hard to find we clearly cannot afford to be losing raw material from the system at current levels: especially if this is from areas where the climate impact will be minimal or can be mitigated through acceptable husbandry changes.

Today may be a battle but it does not excuse tanners from thinking (and planning) about tomorrow.

Michael Redwood

Leather chemist, writer, and advisor on responsible leather manufacturing and material strategy. This article was originally written for ILM.