Innovation at focus at All China Leather Exhibition

03 Jun '18

3 min read

Courtesy: All China Leather Exhibition

Innovation will be the key focus area during the All China Leather Exhibition to be held during August 29-31, 2018 in Shanghai. In addition, sustainability and environmental protection will also occupy centre stage during the fair in view of industrial clean-up of polluting textile mills and tanneries being carried out in China during the past three years.

With this clean-up all but complete, more sustainable leathers can be produced using advanced cutting edge machinery processes that ensure that high quality, more marketable leather is produced. This is the transformation of leather from a “commodity” to a bespoke product suitable for high class and luxury manufacturing.

To illustrate this, the organisers of the All China Leather Exhibition (ACLE) have set up a luxury area, where luxury leather and components are on display. The first Technological Trend Forum and the Innovation Lab will also be organised at the fair. Visits to these areas of ACLE will point at the way towards the future of leather making.

ACLE is jointly organised by the China Leather Industry Association (CLIA) and APLF.
CLIA is the only officially recognised representative body for China’s vast leather industry. CLIA has at its disposal the largest and most comprehensive databases of leather makers and manufacturers of finished products, suppliers and buyers. Hong Kong-based APLF is a joint venture between SIC Group and UBM Asia. For over two decades, APLF has been providing the global leather and fashion industries with its most important meeting and trading place.

The organisers continue to focus on bringing traders and manufacturers from ASEAN countries such as Vietnam and Indonesia to the fair. The ASEAN region is becoming more important especially in terms of footwear manufacturing and has to import most of its leather.

With the advent of the ASEAN-China Free Trade Agreement (ACFTA) footwear manufacturers from Vietnam, for example, will come to ACLE to source leather for footwear manufacture, as there is now a zero per cent import tariff. Western leather suppliers will also benefit indirectly from this zero tariff export market for Chinese tanneries to nations such as Indonesia, Cambodia, Myanmar and of course Vietnam.

This year marks the China Leather Industry Association’s (CLIA) 30th anniversary that since its founding has led to great improvements in China’s tanning industry, reaching state of the art levels in sustainability standards. At the same time, it is ACLE’s 20th year as the platform where such changes were brought forward and have positioned ACLE as the best showcase of this shift in manufacturing, which, as Manufacturing 4.0, encompasses automation and technological innovations to allow sustainable processes and added efficiency.

This process in China’s industry over the last three decades has transformed it from a low cost manufacturing export-driven economy, to a technologically advanced and sustainable manufacturing nation driven by demand from the huge domestic market. (SV)

Fibre2Fashion News Desk – India

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