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It is not a simple moment for the Italian tanning industry, the first in the world in terms of importance given that it is worth around two thirds of the tanning in Europe and just under a quarter of the world‘s. Let’s start from the closing data for 2023: the sector will arrive at the end of the year with revenues of 4.2 billion euros, down 10% compared to 2022. «The causes of this decline are multiple – explains Fulvia Bacchi, general director of National Union of the Tanning Industry (Unic) -. The entire leather supply chain is subdued: among our main destinations – namely footwear, leather goods, automotive and furniture – the only one that has recorded growth is leather goods. Automotive and furniture, however, are in sharp decline.” The period behind, moreover, was very challenging: «The tanning industry is energy-intensive and transformative, the exponential increase in energy costs has affected a sector which, in fact, has lost 19% of production at world in the last 10 years”, continues Bacchi.
Fashion, the States General of Italian Leather Goods in Florence
60% of the tanning business is done across borders and it is also the performance of some key markets that weighs on the tanning accounts. «We recorded a decline both in the USA, -19%, and in China and Hong Kong (-23%). China was an important market, but the real estate crisis this year has made things very difficult, with a number of effects also in the United States. In 2024 we hope the trend will reverse, but we are worried about the middle class which has lost purchasing power and the increase in the unemployment rate.”
The UNIC companies – over 1,150, mainly SMEs from Veneto, Tuscany, Campania and Lombardy, with 18 thousand employees who have increased by 2.9% in the last decade despite the fact that production in volume has decreased – have always had a important market, so much so that an event, Lineapelle New York, is organized every six months: «In the USA we used to sell a lot of leather for furniture, now we have recorded a significant decline. However, we have noticed that the American market is concentrated on low-quality materials”, says Bacchi. Which underlines how, instead, it is luxury that drives the leather sector. This can also be seen in the trend of exports to France which rose by 17 percent: “We expect not only that luxury will hold up, but that it can start to grow again in a more determined way.”
Among the challenges that could help the sector grow – but also make the future decidedly more complicated – there is that of sustainability: «The tannery is the maximum expression of circularity, because it uses waste from other industries, transforming them into fashionable products and luxury – explains Bacchi -. Yet European rules could have a dramatic impact on our supply chain: I am thinking above all of EU regulation no. 1115/2023 (against deforestation, ed.), which imposes a traceability obligation for bovine leather and will come into force in 2025″. The regulation in question requires that the leather be traced from its origins and therefore from breeding: «Italy imports 95% of the raw material because we do not have sufficient livestock – continues Bacchi – and breeders and slaughterers will never take care of the costs that this traceability implies. They will sell the skins elsewhere, perhaps in China, to transform them into products that can then be sold in Europe anyway.”
Among the challenges of tanning, there is also that of training: «We have not yet managed to make our sector attractive in the eyes of the younger generations as is happening in other sectors such as goldsmithing – Bacchi comments – but we are also working on it in synergy with the schools and above all with companies, which are often on the front line. We need decisive technical figures for the sector.”