Leather Goods Processing

Before giving you the information about leather goods processing, first let me share with you the types of

leather, which are widely in use in leather goods productions.

Types of leather

1. Full-grain

2. Corrected-grain

3. Split

4. Top-grain

There are some other types of leathers as well, which are Buckskin (Brained Leather), Fish

leather (Shark, Tilapia, Shagreen, Eel, cod, sturgeon, salmon, Perch, Wolffish), Patent Leather, Deerskin,

Slink, Vachetta Leather, Russia Leather, Nubuck, Napa leather. You can kind this kind of leather in some

places, as they are not that popular as the main types listed above.

Now, as you know all the types of leather, let’s move to the processing of the leather and the

processing starts with the preparatory stages, which mostly includes the cleaning of the raw material.

Here are some preparatory processes

Soaking: In this process, the raw hide is soaked into the water to rehydrate it and clean it.

Unhairing: Raw hide has hairs still left on it. This process ensures that only skin remains and all the hair

get removed.

Liming: This process helps removing the unwanted proteins from the skin.

Fleshing: In this process, the subcutaneous parts are removed from the skin.

Above are the four main preparatory processes to make the leather ready for tanning.

Tanning

Then the process of tanning the leather comes, in which the raw hide is soaked into vegetable oil. This

process turns the raw hide into a stable material. Mostly the leather production companies use

Chromium, which tans the leather and change its color to pale blue, and the product is called wet blue.

Crusting

The crusting process starts with rewetting the leather to make it rehydrated again and then with the

process of sammying the 45-50% of the water is squeezed out of the hide. After that, the leather is split

into two or more layers. Many production companies use other processes as well to increase the strength

and quality of leather.

Once all the processes are finished, the hide is sent to the leather goods manufacturer. These

manufacturers turn this hide into purses, bags, wallets, shoes, jackets and much more.

The leather processing impacts the environment really badly and the reason is in the tanning process

many harmful chemicals are being used. The transformation process increases air pollution, because it

releases hydrogen sulfide and ammonia in the environment. Another waste produced by the leather

processing is foul-smelling water, which has high chromium levels and sulfide levels.

Nowadays, a new technology of leather production is being used, which is called ECO leather. ECO

leather is actually made out of the wastage of the main stream leather production and it is similar to

recycling and reusing. Many companies around the world are now accepting this new technology day by

day.