Tanneries face leather shortage

Having long since given up its booming leather tanning units owing to the pollution concerns, the leather industry of Agra has become completely dependent on leather sourced from tanneries in Kanpur, Chennai, Kolkata and abroad.

But over the past few years, since the local tanneries were closed on Supreme Court directions, the leather footwear and fashion industry of Agra has been facing an acute shortage of quality leather for their production, adversely affecting the quality of footwear produced by the local units, a problem that the local industrialists attribute to the irregular export of finished leather by the tanneries in Kanpur to foreign countries, in the guise of "crush leather".

The issue was raised by the Agra footwear exporters at an interactive meeting organised by the Council for Leather Exports recently, demanding an immediate ban on the export of any type of leather from the tanneries in the country, as it was creating a shortage of good leather in Agra as well as Jalandhar, two major hubs of the leather footwear industry in North India.

Demanding that the CLE exercise its powers to put a stop to this irregular practice by the tanneries, Nazir Ahmed, managing director, Park Exports and Puran Dawar, managing director, Dawar Footwear Industries said the leather footwear exporters of Agra were facing difficulties in sourcing good leather due to the shortage created by the Kanpur tanneries by illegally exporting finished leather, which was banned, disguising it as "crush leather" whose export was allowed.

Talking to the CLE Chairman Mukhtarul Amin, the exporters also said the Central Footwear Training Institute (CFTI), which had been established by the CLE to train workers for the footwear industry, was not able to train enough workers to cope with the constantly rising demand for more trained labour to work in the footwear units.

They demanded that the CLE should either upgrade the CFTI to increase its training capacity or establish another training institute in the town to work in tandem with the existing institute, apart from setting up a footwear design studio to train the footwear designers in developing new shoe patterns using advanced CAD/CAM systems.

Later, addressing the footwear exporters, Mukhtarul Amin said the issue of irregular export of finished leather from Kanpur was indeed a serious issue and the CLE would soon put a curb on this practice to protect the footwear exporters of Agra.