Footwear - Leather - PPE Industry News & Articles

Netherlands-based Stahl Holdings B.V. has completed the carve-out of its wet-end leather chemicals business into a new business, Muno Italy S.r.l. On the leather side, Stahl continues with its finishing business.In South Africa and sub-Saharan Africa, Mendelson & Frost (Pty) Ltd Tanning Services Division remains the agent for Stahl.R ...more

Firstly: Happy New Year with my best wishes for good health and great bottom lines!Of CNN – and PETA – of lionfish and Burmese pythons – and whether Leather has wings (with apologies to Lewis Carroll)Let’s start by admitting that the leather industry has negligible recognition on the world stage. Except for those o ...more

S&V – originally Shoes & Views – is 92 this year. But this publication, S&V African Leather, this year celebrates its 20th anniversary as a standalone publication. This year also marks the 20th birthday of S&V’s third magazine, S&V Protect, which covers personal protective equipment (PPE).While we&rsq ...more

So far, leather industry appears to be relatively unaffected ...more

Durban, KZN, SA – Zamani Oliphant has been appointed as the incoming executive director of the Southern African Footwear & Leather Industries Association (SAFLIA). She will start on 01 February 2026, and will work alongside outgoing executive director Jirka Vymĕtal for a handover period.An attorney, she joins from LexisNexis, w ...more

Cape Town, W. Cape, SA – Range launches – complete with shelves and shelves of samples, showings in the major centres, models, snacks, and invitations to a cross section of retailers – are so from-days-gone-by, so out-of-date, so ‘pre-Covid’ – and so welcome, it turns out.Bolton Footwear group sales, de ...more

Cape Town, W. Cape, SA – Sports energy products and sportswear distributor Pure Endurance Solutions has become the Southern African distributor of Hong Kong-based basketball and running shoe brand, 361°. In footwear, it previously represented Mizuno.361° was previously distributed locally, for a short period.On a much smalle ...more

Pietermaritzburg, KZN, SA – Modway Shoes (Pty) Ltd was voted the best shoe store in the 2025 ‘Best of Pmb & Midlands’ by readers of The Witness and other KZN newspapers in the Caxton Group.Modway has one bricks-and-mortar store and an online store.Shoe Street Brookside and Sole Base Hayfields were second and third.&l ...more

Portugal shows there is much more to being a successful footwear exporting nation than just offering low prices. ‘Welcome to the industry of the future’. ...more

My father was born during World War II in Leicestershire, England. Literally during the war. The Luftwaffe was bombing at the time, and the safest place they could take my Grandma Marge to deliver was underground in the mortuary, where, without fuss, he was born on the mortuary slab. We all swear that his sometimes dark sense of humour c ...more

Christopher Lionel Astill, or as we knew him at the Apeco office, CLA, was a smart businessman who knew how to ‘use’ people for their knowledge. I don’t mean that in a horrible way. It’s just that he, by his own admission, was not very savvy when it came to product.Especially technical issues. He would rather tap i ...more

The fire in Hong Kong which affected 8 32-storey residential towers in November will lead to scrutiny of the bamboo scaffolding which encased the buildings.There will be pressure to ban it, or at least modify it perhaps to the point where it loses the properties that have made it an attractive option for so long.Bamboo scaffolding is wide ...more

Show report from Messe DüsseldorfDüsseldorf, Germany (7 November 2025) – The theme for A+A 2025 was ‘People matter’.2,340 exhibitors from 70 countries presented a spectrum of products, technologies and innovations for a safe, healthy and sustainable world of work in 13 exhibition halls. There were 67,000 trade ...more

Head and Hearing Protection 3M™ PELTOR™ WS™ ALERT™ XPV Headset: This solar-powered headset features a patented film that charges the battery using both sunlight and indoor light, providing approximately 78 hours of working time. Photo: https://za.rs-online.com/3M™ Speedglas™ G5-03 Welding Helm ...more

Osnabruck, Germany – PU systems supplier Huntsman Corporation and safety footwear manufacturer Steitz Secura have developed a PU solution that can help improve the circularity of safety footwear. The DALTOPED® polyurethane midsole system can incorporate recycled content without compromising performance.PU plays a vital role ...more

Why traditional radios and CCTV are no longer enough in complex threat environments Global case studies showing measurable impact on response times, safety, and transparency How LTE, 5G, and AI enable continuous, multi layered intelligence for faster, more effective decisions The opportunity for South Africa to leapfrog legacy sy ...more

Numerical models for the risk assessment of underground shock waves ...more

Functionalised foam ceramics for treating polluted waterIndustrial process and wastewater pose a major challenge when it comes to environmental protection. Fraunhofer researchers in Dresden have now succeeded in developing compact and energy-efficient systems that use photocatalytic oxidation to efficiently break down impurities. At the ...more