Specialty chemicals company LANXESS has once again hosted a symposium devoted to the industry using leather as component substrate. According to the company’s commitment to better engage brands and other stakeholders in the industry to support leather as a valued material, the overall objective was to provide a better understanding of the leather material to brands – especially with regard to the use of chemicals.

The symposium, which took place at the company’s headquarters in Cologne from 11 to 12 January 2018 and was held for the third time, was attended by around 70 representatives of leading brand manufacturers from the apparel industry and certification institutes.

After the welcoming address by Luis López Remón, head of LANXESS’s Leather business unit, numerous experts from the leather industry gave top-class speeches on the subject of leather. Dr. Volker Rabe, Head of Technical Product Management for Tanning at LANXESS, explained the physical and chemical properties of this extraordinary material as well as the different stages of the production process. Victoria Addy from the British BLC Leather Technology Centre provided an overview of the risk assessment and the current efforts to make the leather industry obligatory for a responsible use of the chemicals used. Dr. Martin Kleban, the HSEQ representative in LANXESS’s Leather business unit, held a presentation on special properties such as water vapour permeability, hydrophobicity and flame retardance. The behavior of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) was also discussed. Further presentations dealt with the conservation of leather to protect it from fungal attack and its classification in comparison with other materials, especially in terms of sustainability.

At the end of the event, Dr. Dietrich Tegtmeyer, who is responsible at LANXESS for the global development of crusting and leather industry relations, presented an innovative technology for the recycling of leather shavings in leather production. With the project “Resource-efficient production of leather chemicals” (ReeL), he presented a modular, fully networked plant concept for the production of X-biomer retanning agents directly in the tannery, thus giving a foretaste of the leather production of the future.