Tanzanian leather industry remains at low ebb
Published: 2nd Sep 2021
Himo Town/Area Moshi, Kilimanjaro Region, Tanzania - The response from Leather Association of Tanzania executive secretary Freddy Silvester Kabala to our questions for the feature on sheep and goat skins leathers in the last issue arrived too late for inclusion. Here are his answers:
laughter conditions, storage and preservation of hides and skins are very poor in Tanzania, according to the Leather Association of Tanzania.
Approximately how many sheep and goats does Tanzania have?
21.29 million goats and 7.8 million sheep
Approximately how many are slaughtered per year?
3.63 million goats and 1,71 million sheep
Approximately how many skins are bought by tanneries?
Currently less than 0.5 million skins
Approximately how many are pickled and exported?
There are no exports of pickled skins
How many processed to wet blue and exported?
Currently there are no exports of wet blue skins
How many are finished for export?
There is no export of finished leather.
And how many finished for sale to local manufacturers of footwear and leather goods?
In Tanzania we had 10 tanneries (7 processing to wet blue stage for export and 3 making finished leather for the domestic market). However production performance has been fluctuating over the years, reaching a peak in 2014. Over 90% of tanning output was semi processed leather (wet blue) for export.
Following the year 2015 there has been a sharp decline in demand and prices for the leather, forcing 7 tanneries to close and only 3 processing finished leather for the domestic market.
Have the standards of animal husbandry, slaughter and flay improved over the last few years, and has that benefitted the tanning industry?
Not really. The majority of livestock production is still carried out in a traditional practice on a household scale. Livestock production for 80% consists of traditional agro pastoralists and 14% of pastoralists. This traditional livestock production practice often causes defects in animal skin resulting in the poor quality of hides and skins.
Adequate slaughtering facilities to support leather manufacturing are not available in Tanzania. Most of these are simple buildings where killing and dressing are carried out on the floor. Informal slaughters also operate throughout the country with poor building conditions, hygiene, and safety. Inadequate slaughter facilities cause animal skin to be mixed with blood and faeces which makes skin preservation hard. In addition, slaughtering facilities in Tanzania are located far from tanneries creating additional transportation cost and potential damage that deteriorates skins quality.
What is export demand like for the skins, and is that stable, growing or shrinking?
As pointed out above, export demand has been shrinking rapidly since 2015 and currently there is completely no market for skins, forcing a lot of skins to be dumped. In the last two years there has been a huge demand for raw dried cattle hides from West Africa - Nigeria in particular - where they end up being consumed as food.
Do export customers prefer them to be less processed or more processed? Is that preference changing?
Less processed.
What is the domestic demand like for the skins and is that stable, growing or shrinking?
Domestic demand is not growing due to the market being flooded with imports of synthetic (PVC) products made of synthetic leather and second hand (used) products.
What influence are government policies having on the sheep and goat leather industry? Are there other policies needed?
No, the problem is the market.
Footwear Industry Articles
- National Leather and General Goods Strategy WorkshopOn 23 June, following months of fieldwork, B&M Analysts (BMA) hosted an online workshop to discuss the recovery of the handbags, belts, travel goods and allied manufacturing industries in SA.The industries, although very diverse, fall under the General Goods & Handbags Sector of the National Bargaining Council of the Leather Indus ...moreSAFLEC AGM 2026: Strengthening of relationships between industry organisations and government a key development
This has been a defining year for the South African Footwear & Leather Export Council (SAFLEC). It has been a year of innovation, collaboration and meaningful progress, where together with our members and strategic partners, we have continued to strengthen the competitiveness of South Africa's footwear and leather industry while creat ...moreThe showroom pair is not the orderA shoe on a showroom table is wonderfully persuasive. A buyer can flex the forefoot, press the heel counter, check the stitching, compare the two shoes and turn the pair over to examine the sole. Colour, finish and hand feel are all there to judge.The purchase order may then reduce that pair to a short line: one style number, one colour d ...more
Leather Industry Articles
- Sam Setter's 'Pills': You have to be very clever to understand this document, but hopefully it will do some goodIn June, UNIDO launched an impressive document called “Guideline”. It is a very detailed, environment oriented, technical and scientific document where the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Corporate Carbon Footprint (CCP) play a prominent role. The document, peer reviewed, has been developed for UNIDO with the main contributor ...more‘FMD is here to stay – we have to learn to live with it and manage it’
Pretoria, Gauteng, SA – FMD is no longer a series of isolated outbreaks; it has become a national systemic risk, and we need to shift our mindset from emergency response to living with and managing FMD responsibly. The pressure is already showing in the numbers. Our latest figures show cattle slaughter down 12% and sheep slaughter d ...moreZimbabwe Leather Development Council lobbies for Government contracts
The Zimbabwe Leather Development Council (ZLDC) is lobbying policymakers to open up public procurement contracts to local leather manufacturers, arguing that Government contracts are essential to reviving the country’s struggling leather value chain.Speaking on the sidelines of the Zimbabwe Industrialisation Conference and Expo (ZIC ...more
PPE Industry Articles
- RealPPE Marketplace: Where safety meets smarter procurementRealPPE Marketplace is a 100% black women-owned B2B PPE marketplace built for South African industry. Founded after years of witnessing safety officers and procurement teams lose time to fragmented suppliers, inconsistent pricing, and missing documentation, RealPPE was created to bring structure and reliability to industrial PPE sourcing. ...moreProtecting the workforce: The critical role of PPE
Personal protective equipment (PPE) is utilised in a work-environment as part of a larger prevention plan, because on its own protection is limited and may even provide a false sense of protection.An occupational disease prevention plan must be an actionable approach that identifies workplace health hazards, evaluates exposure, and i ...more2nd SA PPE conference being planned for 2027 under the heading ‘Smart protection: the next era of PPE’Johannesburg, Gauteng, SA – Technology, artificial intelligence, connected devices and data are transforming the way we think about personal protection equipment — from how PPE is procured and selected, to how it is used, monitored and managed in the workplace.After the successful launch of the South African PPE conference hel ...more
© S&V Publications
