Stahl, a leader in specialty chemistry for coatings, processing, and treatments for everyday materials, has opened a centre of excellence in Kanpur, India. The mission of the centre of excellence is to support the introduction of environmentally friendly technologies and processing methods and to train staff in best practices for leather manufacturing.

The centre focuses on sustainable leather technologies and is part of a five-year public-private partnership between Stahl, Solidaridad, PUM Netherlands senior experts and local stakeholders to reduce pollution, increase water efficiency and improve working conditions in the Kanpur-Unnao Leather Cluster, in the state of Uttar Pradesh.

“In this state-of-the-art centre or excellence for sustainable leather technologies, our experts will work side-by-side with tanners and other local partners to share knowledge and showcase the latest sustainability-driven solutions and technologies, with a particular focus on reducing water pollution in the nearby tanning clusters. The centre of excellence is located in Kanpur in order to ensure the successful implementation of the public-private partnership goals, and to ensure that the initiatives remain in place after the project period expires,” Michael Costello, director of sustainability of Stahl said.

Around 200 attendees joined the opening of the centre of excellence for sustainable leather technologies in Kanpur, during which Stahl shared its views on, and efforts towards securing, a more responsible future.

“We actively promote the safe use of chemicals around the world. Since the start in 2017, over 100 tanneries in the Kanpur-Unnao cluster have taken part in occupational health and safety training courses and demonstrations on topics like TDS, BoD, CoD, handling chemicals and the safe use of hydrogen sulfide (H2S). With the centre of excellence in Kanpur, we can contribute even more to promoting safe use of chemicals in leather-making, especially in the Kanpur-Unnao region,” Tuncay Deriner, Stahl’s managing director in South Asia said.

The day before the event, during the pre-launch, customers and partners were invited to participate in a workshop about innovative technologies for responsible leather. Central to the workshop were the recently introduced pickle-free tanning and waterproofing technologies.

“The key benefits of the pickle-free technology are that it reduces the effluent load and eliminates the use of salt, acid and the basification process, depending on the type of substrate. This way we can reduce water consumption by about 40 per cent and work towards a more efficient tanning process. The pickle-free process will lead to a reduction in effluent load on the Ganges river basin,” Prasanna Maduri, Stahl campus manager India said.

Fibre2Fashion News Desk (GK)

Disclaimer - All News/Articles items are subject to copyright and no article either in full or part may be reproduced in any form without permission from Fibre2Fashion Pvt. Ltd.