Looking for quality and jobs in leather world it is highly recommended to participate in leather exhibition. And not just one – the more leather exhibitions in different corners of the world – the better. Such events provide great opportunities for knowledge exchange, gaining information about given market and seeing for oneself the materials during special shows. However, if you are unable to attend far away events, this article will guide you through leather word quality and jobs map.
Brasil is known from delivering vast amounts of leather and therefore vast amounts of leather jobs. However, the quality of it rarely goes above “C selection”. Brasil exports tons of wet-blue, but Argentina is known for its high quality crust. In order to find a bit higher class on this continent, we recommend to take a closer look at Uruguay, Venezuela, or earlier mentioned Argentina.
Having enough beaches and carnival, pay attention to Texas. North America is well-known for providing a lot of leather jobs, because of its vast market of raw hides. A job there would be one focused around good quality materials, praised by many. But leather of truly best quality can be found in Europe. A proper “A selection” materials are produced in Poland, France, Germany and England. Looking towards East, in Ukraine, one can also find better leather of “AB selection”. Moreover here we can find skins of heifer and ox which are occurring very rarely globally. However, because of half-machine pull (assisted) in Ukrainian slaughter houses one may find some flay cuts on their leather.
Going further to the East we find ourselves in Belarus which biggest advantage is machine pulled hides. Unfortunately the quality itself drops heavily in comparison with their Western neighbors. We will find there from 5 to 15 percent of “AB selection” thick leather. Estimating the grain quality one should remember about small defects which become visible with a good light. The selection of “C and D” leather are similar comparing products from Belarus and Russia, however in the second country the hides are hand pulled what causes many flay cuts and devaluates them.
Africa constitutes a quite big market for leather jobs as well, though the quality there leave much to be desired. The skin of African cows are often defected with a lot visible small fly bites which are hard to cover. However there can be found some good tanneries run by English which perform all processes according to world’s best standards. There can be found even some LWG certified tanneries.