Top Russian tannery joins SATRA

Ryazan Tannery, Russia's leading leather supplier, has become a member of SATRA. Quality director Alexander Suvorov quotes SATRA's modern global network as a key factor in joining and explains: 'Our quality is well established, but you can't succeed on quality alone. You also need to know which companies and areas need good leather, how they want it and when. We feel SATRA will help us in gaining better worldwide integration.' The tannery, founded in 1916, is located in the city of Ryazan, 180 km south-east of Moscow, and after Mikhail Gorbachev introduced perestroika (restructuring) to Russia, a new tannery was built in 1988 using Italian technical support. Ryazan is also the largest tannery in Europe, employing more than 2,000 personnel and producing different types of finished leather, crust, wet-white and wet-blue hides. The soaking volume of raw hides, mainly of Russian origin, is 5,000 tons per month. Ryazan's main direction is in the manufacture of footwear leather, although it also supplies garment, upholstery and automobile leathers and 80% of it product is exported to Europe (Italy, Spain, Portugal, France) and Asia (India, Pakistan, Vietnam, China). Overall sales were up 37% in 2004 with clear profit up 112%. 'We will look to SATRA to help us in our development of finished leather', adds continued Mr Suvorov, 'especially with its industry-accepted leather grading systems and laboratory accreditation.'