Credit: Sirp
The world of leather is, by definition, a world of circularity. The leather industry in fact lives off the waste of the food industry, and in turn is made up of several elements that can and must be recovered to further improve this sustainability process. Among all of them, the crust plays a central role: considered less valuable than the grain due to its fibrous and porous characteristics, over the years it has become, thanks to innovations in its finishing process, an increasingly versatile material and a qualitative alternative to the grain, as Alex Rossi, Marketing and Sales Director of Sirp, a Veneto company that has been dedicated to the enhancement of the refined crust for years, explains to us.
«Nowadays it is a very versatile material, which reaches lower thicknesses than the traditional 1.2-1.4 mm which make it very competitive in terms of softness, bringing it almost to the levels of a grain in terms of performance and sensory characteristics».
A result made possible in the tanning process through the use of softeners and specific processes in the wet blue tanning phase but also through embossing, printing and engraving finishes, which enrich the surface of the leather with visual and tactile effects that reproduce the grain of the leather, naturally present in the grain but not in the crust.
If traditionally it was a material used for trimmings, trimming or small dies, now it presents itself as a material suitable even for large and soft bags, also as an alternative to suede which is currently a seasonal trend. The challenge for the coming years is to further refine this gap and invest in sustainability.
«We are working hard on the traceability of the raw material and on issues related to real sustainability, not just declared», explains Rossi. «We will soon present our first sustainability report, the result of a path of alignment with international standards but also of concrete choices such as our internal purification plant, independent from the tanning district, which allows us to have direct and timely control over the entire process».
