Over the last week or so, I have been in Chennai, southern India to visit the factories that make most of my production of handbags and small leather goods.
A Tannery Visit
As part of my travels to see production and choose new leathers to work with, I generally visit one or more tanneries while I am in Chennai. This time I visited 2, one in the city and one in the countryside. Both are very large and spacious (much bigger than any of the tanneries I have ever visited in Italy) and they can produce 1000’s of square feet of leather at a time. 
The countryside tannery allowed me to take a few photos. This picture shows a row of wooden drums ready to be filled with hides and dye to start the process. The drums are vast; each can hold 5000 square feet of leather.
The pipes in the background are carrying water to feed into the drums as the tanning process uses a lot of water. This tannery is very modern and much of the processes are automated so there isn’t a huge workforce here. The hides hanging above the drums are in the drying process, all black goat skins – so I didn’t get a very colourful photo this time!
Maintenance
Maintenance is very important and here is a photo of a brand new wooden drum being made on site. (I asked the tannery guy to stand near it so you get a sense of the size of it).
This tannery is right out in the middle of nowhere at the foot of some steep, wooded hills and with all the trees around it, it is very shady – fabulous when the summer temperatures can get up into the mid 40’s Celsius.
Water Treatment
Both tanneries I visited have their own water
treatment plants where the dirty water gets filtered several times. The first ‘pond’ is quite dirty looking but by the time the water passes through the next 3 ponds it’s clean enough to be used in the local agricultural industry.
A lot of salt is also used in the tanning process; it is a preservative. As the salty water drains into the first open air pond, the salt collects together and can be skimmed off the surface to be re-used again and again.
No Waste
Even the little scraps of off cuts of leather are stored and then collected by trucks to be taken to use to make leatherboard which is sometimes used for stiffening in the handbag and shoe industries.
So, I’ve seen the factories and now the tanneries – next time, I will be showing some new samples that have been made.
