Collaboration potential for China and Brazil

25 February 2008



During the recent ACLE in Shanghai, an afternoon seminar on Environment Friendly Supplies was put on by ASSINTECAL, the Brazilian association for companies of components for leather, footwear and related goods, in partnership with the CLIA.


Introducing the presentations by three Brazilian companies with regard to environmentally friendly processing, Xu Yong, honorary president of CLIA, said that China is a leading country in terms of animal husbandry and has an abundant resource of raw leather. It has also a strong leather processing capacity. The down stream industries such as shoe making, leather garments and leather component industries are also well developed. The leather industry in China has a vast potential for future development. Brazil is the largest country in Latin America and is also among the top leather producing countries in the world. The leather chemical industry in Brazil has been developing rapidly in recent years. It has won a great reputation for excellent quality, stable performance and awareness of environmental protection.  At present, the tanning industry in China is paying more attention to the saving of energy, the reduction of discharge and clean production. It has a vast demand for environment friendly chemical materials with excellent quality, reasonable price and satisfactory after sales service. Today's seminar will serve as an ideal platform to promote the mutual understanding of enterprises in Brazil and China and achieve the complementarity of their respective advantages and their co-development. Osmar Graf, director, Tanac, introduced Tanfloc, their coagulant/flocculant agent for waste treatment which is of essentially vegetable origin. They describe it as nature taking care of nature. It is an organic polymer, cationic, with low molecular weight and is derived from renewable resources: black acacia bark extracts - Acacia mearnsii - mimosa forests. Tanac export manager Paulo Costa said that a 20-40% rise in trade effluent costs was expected over the next five years. This is due to the need to comply with ever increasing severity in regulations. Noko Quimica's Ricardo Perez, director, detailed his company's compact retanning system saying compact systems promote lower environmental impact and better productivity. He claimed that with compact retanning processes a medium sized tannery (500 sq m/month) could reduce their water consumption by 85%. He gave, as an example, one tannery producing 1 million ft2/month which changed from conventional to compact tanning and reduced water consumption from 1,350,000 litres to 200,000 litres. There was also an appreciable reduction in time, 420 minutes down to 240 with three hours saved per drum. The two speakers from Seta, Morgana Carvalho and Marcio C R Kreibich, outlined two new technologies from their company. The compact LETS system applied to limed pelts allows chrome tanning to be carried out without basification, leading to less environmental impact. Seta say this is a safe and simple process which provides one product for pickling and deliming. Their second product, Acqua Pol is a flocculant for wastewater treatment after modified tannins are used.



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