End Of Year Partner Meeting - 3rd December 2024
This year’s meeting continued to build on previous years, both in terms of content and attendees. We had over 100 registrations this year, both in person and remote from 15 different countries and representing organisations from across the leather value chain.
The meeting began with a look at SLF’s year in review, releasing our Annual Report and confirming continued growth – 11% partnership, 28% revenue, and 45.5% increase in audits and preliminary assessment visits.
This was followed by an insightful presentation by Gustavo Gonzalez-Quijano who updated attendees on the latest developments with respect to the EUDR and shared important work conducted by the University of Pisa on an Impact Study of the effect of EUDR on the European leather industry.
Staying with the subject of incoming regulation, Hans van Haarst, of SHV Holdings, followed up with an in-depth look at what it really takes to comply with the EU CSRD (Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive). Highlighting the need for organisations to start working together to meet this demanding regulation was a key takeaway, along with the endorsement of the SLF Transparency Dashboard™ as the right tool for supporting the leather industry to meet the compliance challenges that lie ahead.
SLF’s Technical Review then took the audience through the work of the Foundation in the last year highlighting many key achievements including:
- Inclusion of SLF on the ITC Standards Map, following robust 3rd party evaluation of our Standards, Processes and Governance
- Linking each section of our ESG Audit Standard to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. This helps companies to see how working within the framework of SLF, supports their contributions towards global improvement measures.
- Introduction of a Supplemental Report for Sub-Contractors to make the audit process simpler for companies using sub-contractors.
- Full review and updating of all the ESG Standards and Benchmarks.
- Development of a Brand Dashboard.
- Enhanced equivalency visibility on the SLF Transparency Dashboard™ for other certification.
- Introduction of a suite of four training workshops that can be customised to suit requirements.
The last session before the break was a presentation from Katie Kutskill, of Is It Leather?. Katie gave a lively presentation about the need for clear communication when it comes to materials and how they are produced. With some startling case studies, Katie’s presentation drove home just how urgently our industry needs to work together on communication and external messaging.
The second part of the meeting focused on the Project based work that has been a significant growth area for SLF in the last 12 months. This is due in part to the proven value of our A.I.M. Approach to improvement. SLF has been able to facilitate pathways to certification that were not possible previously.
Following a short introduction from Nicholas Mudungwe, the Executive Director of the Africa Leather & Leather Products Institute, we heard from Kevin Latner, Vice President of the Leather & Hide Council of America who presented the project work that they have been working on relating to Life Cycle Analysis of the leather value chain and how real data is proving that the impact of cattle has been grossly exaggerated previously. Making the case for why we need to work with the industry for better data in order to prove the sustainable benefits of cattle and leather. The presentation also reviewed the training programme currently underway to support regions including Africa, Asia and Central and South America. SLF is working with LHCA on both of these workstreams that will continue in 2025 and beyond.
The final presentation was given by Dr Seyi Omolosa from the University of Northampton. Giving an overview of the SMEP funded project to support traceability and environmental improvement in Bangladesh – the Leathertrace project will run for 18 months until May 2026. SLF is one of five consortium partners, headed up by University of Northampton who are delivering the programme objectives together. The primarily output is a traceability tool that will be consider the geographic concerns of Bangladesh.
The meeting concluded with a surprise gift from the Leather Dude (Junaid Vohra) – “Making Leather Great Again” hoodies for all the speakers.
All delegates in attendance also received a limited edition leather cow made by the Institute for Creative Leather Technologies (ICLT) to commemorate the last meeting at the University while the ICLT remains open.
If you would like to review the presentations our speakers gave on the day you can access them here:
