A new a new 50,000m2 tannery is the centrepiece of a new EU scheme to support the Egyptian leather industry.

The EU announced that it will build the tannery as part of its ‘SwitchMed’ initiative aimed at cleaning up the leather sector in Egypt and making it more competitive. 

The initiative is designed to support and connect stakeholders to scale-up social and eco innovations in the Mediterranean, and will kick off with the new tannery, a project intended to create about 100 jobs and a production site with a turnover of approximately €4 million per year. It will also be equipped with state of the art eco-friendly technology developed by INESCOP innovation network.

Once that is up and running, the EU says it is working on a framework of cooperation is for a second project to the set-up of a new plant for the production of gelatine out of untanned leather waste from local tanneries.