East Hides Tanzania Ltd plan to open more branches in order to supply enough raw materials to match the manufacturing capacity of the tannery in Morogoro. Production at the Morogoro Tannery is likely to commence in April when the factory starts to be fully operational. The Mwanza Tannery will also be revived.
Currently the firm collects hides to export to customers abroad. Onorato Garavaglia, the firm’s managing director, said the firm plans branches in Tanga and Singida, to add to existing branches in Dar es Salaam, Moshi, Shinyanga and Mbeya.
He was speaking in the wake of a joint venture agreement signed recently between the East Hides Group and the Caspian group, which has mainly construction interests and subsidiary activities in Mwanza and Morogoro. ‘We plan to open more branches to assist people in the livestock industry to secure a reliable market for their products, add value to hides and skins for export and at the same time create more jobs for Tanzanian people.’
The joint venture will also help to kick-start the revival of the Tanzania leather tanning industry as a whole, with job creation, value addition and the generation of foreign exchange expected,’ he said. The joint venture may also result in placing Tanzania in the East African hub for leather processing and tanning.
The agreement commits the two parties to a 50% shared ownership. East Hides Group have sales offices, hides and skins collection warehouses, tanneries and distribution operations in many parts of the world. ‘This enables us to obtain early intelligence about market conditions and to position ourselves accordingly, to stay competitive in the market, and to offer improved services and range of products to our valued customers.’
The East Hides Group were established in 1992 by Geoffrey Gluckman, and, today, are regarded as one of the top hide and skin organisations in Europe. The group specialises in hides and skins from Africa, Europe, Russia and the CIS.