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| Tanners turn to eco-friendly techniques |
| Vishnu Pandey / New Delhi/ Kanpur Dec 19, 2009, 00:03 IST |
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Changing fashion trends and ever-increasing environmental awareness in developed countries has made local tanners shift focus on eco-friendly ‘vegetable’ tanning techniques.
A local tannery owner and a qualified chemical engineer has now developed a technique of vegetable tanning which would be able to infuse the characteristics of conventional chrome tanning into vegetable tanned leather products.
According to Super Tannery owner, Mohd Imran, the man behind the innovation, the process has potential to be developed into a branded product with geographical indications. “It is also being noticed that the international fashion trend is switching over to fully vegetable tanned and environment-friendly leathers,” he elucidates.
The process does not depend upon any sort of synthetic chemicals which has to be licensed by the industry certifications. “The certifications have resulted in great demand for this type of leather in the foreign markets, as it is more comfortable to wear and skin-friendly apart from being soft, supple and attractive,” explains Imran.
These advantages are often absent in the conventional process of chemical or chrome tanning whereas the vegetable tanned leather sells at around 30 per cent higher prices than the conventional counterparts. “We are not being able to fulfil the demand for our products in markets of United States of America (USA) and Ireland due to our limited production capacity,” he added.
The small-scale tanners and craftsmen in Jajmau area of Kanpur are trying to adopt the process of ‘neo’-vegetable tanning to obtain a finish finer than that of chrome tanned leather, especially attracted by the higher selling price of the new product.
Imran, however, says that not enough is being done to promote the natural tanning processes by the administration as the patronage is poor and 15 per cent export duty also proves to be a large hurdle. Still he says that the exports of this variety of leather amount to around Rs 100 crore every year.
“If the duty is removed and liberal imports of essential ingredients allowed, a new lease of life would be imparted to the eco-friendly leather industry,” he added.
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