Sustainable Leather Foundation is committed to providing access to training and information that supports best practice for the leather value chain.
In addition to our own training materials in our Partner Only Resources area, we work and collaborate with external organisations and individuals, to provide access to a number of value-added resources for the leather community.
UNIDO: Leather Panel
UNIDO is the specialized agency of the United Nations that promotes industrial development for poverty reduction, inclusive globalization and environmental sustainability.
The mission of the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), as described in the Lima Declaration adopted at the fifteenth session of the UNIDO General Conference in 2013, as well as the Abu Dhabi Declaration adopted at the eighteenth session of the UNIDO General Conference in 2019, is to promote and accelerate inclusive and sustainable industrial development (ISID) in Member States.
The relevance of ISID as an integrated approach to all three pillars of sustainable development is recognized by the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the related Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which will frame United Nations and country efforts towards sustainable development in the next ten years. UNIDO’s mandate is fully recognized in SDG-9, which calls to “Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation”. The relevance of ISID, however, applies in greater or lesser extent to all SDGs.
UNIDO Courses:
Making Leather – An Overview of Manufacture
In association with IULTCS, SLTC and UNIDO, leather industry expert Richard Daniels has released an extensive guide to leather manufacturing which is entirely free to access.
The ten part guide provides expert insight into leathermaking and was created to give aspiring leather technicians a self training resource for the procedures used in making a wide variety of leathers.
The course materials are compatible to be viewed in desktop, mobile and tablet formats and covers the raw material properties, manufacturing procedures and outcomes, and production of major leather types including:
– Bovine Hides
– Hair Sheep and Goatskins
– Wool-bearing Sheepskins
Links to each section of the training are below.
Scroll down to read more about the creator of the training, Richard Daniels
Richard Daniels entered the leather industry as a chemist, and then moved on to become a tanner. During the first half of his career he was directly responsible for all technical aspects of the production and manufacture for a full range of shoe upper leathers, in addition to being involved with special projects with a group of five tanneries. This tannery work mainly focused on implementing or improving recycling, effluent treatment, energy management and process rationalisation systems.
Richard was also responsible for the establishment of the first accredited quality control system in the leather industry – BS 5750 (ISO 9000)
Following this, Richard worked as a technical consultant with a number of private companies, governments and international organisations around the world.
This work encompassed hide and skin improvement, techno-economic studies, tannery rationalisations and surveys, counterpart training and environmental projects.
Richard has also worked as the technical editor of World Leather magazine, contributed to the development of reed-bed technology for tannery effluent treatment, created a series of text books, distanced learning modules, and worked within Universities lecturing on leather science and environmental management systems.
Currently Richard has been working on the development of a self-learning study for Technologists which will follow “Leather: an introduction” and “Making leather: An overview of manufacture”, the resources linked below, entitled “Making leather: the technology of manufacture”.