New eco-tannery in Saigon launched with test run
16 October 2009At the beginning of October, a test run was successfully completed at ISA Tan Tec’s new eco-tannery in the Vietnamese city of Saigon. Everything is working according to plan, says founder and managing director Tom Schneider:
‘Our planners, technicians and builders have all worked incredibly hard: The test run has already made it clear that the quality of the products we make in Saigon is outstanding – not least because we have a fantastic team here! And I’m particularly pleased that, as we can now see, we will more than meet our extremely ambitious targets for energy and water consumption.’
The leather produced at the new tannery uses 35% less energy and 50% less water than is required compared with the industry average. This is documented by the ‘LITE’ label (‘Low Impact to Environment’), which makes the carbon dioxide emissions for each square metre of leather produced transparent. LITE standards are based on calculations by the BLC Leather Technology Centre for average energy and water consumption in the industry.
A total of 60 employees are currently preparing for the start of large-scale production in 2010. Approximately 250 employees will produce two million square metres of leather every year for customers such as Timberland, New Balance, Keen and Hush Puppies. The grand opening will take place on January 23, 2010.
