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Reports
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Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3

Preparation.......................................................................................................................................3

Tanning.....................................................................................................................................4
Crusting.....................................................................................................................................4
Surfacing...................................................................................................................................4
Coloring...........................................................................................................................................4
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Introduction
The leather making that is used in the fashion industry is a technical and time-taking
process. To produce the same cuts and quality, efficiency and quality control are the key. The
process begins with the animal hide and then the end step includes shaping that leather into bags,
belts, coats, hats, etc. There are three basic steps in commercial leather making: preparing for
tanning, tanning the leather, then processing the tanned leather (Mella et al., 2018). It usually
takes almost eight weeks to complete the entire process.

Preparation
For the leather production, animals are raised on feed, water, pasture-lands and fossil
fuels for transportation. Although the leather producing companies tag their products as ‘eco-
friendly’, but the tanning process requires chemicals like formaldehyde, cyanide-based dyes,
various oils and coal-tar derivatives.
The first stage is when the skin is prepared for tanning. The unwanted skin components in
raw form are removed. The following should be included in preparatory stage:
Preservation step: the skin is made temporally imputrescible (Brudzyńska et al., 2022).
Soaking step: the process of washing and rehydration.
Liming step: this step removes unwanted proteins.
Fleshing: subcutaneous material is removed from the skin.
Splitting: the hide or skin is cut into different layers.
Deliming: unhairing chemicals are removed from the pelt.
Bating: in this stage, in order to remove proteins further, proteolytic proteins are injected into the
skin.
Degreasing: the natural oils are extracted and removed from skin as much as possible.
Pickling - the pickling is done in the presence of salts to lower the pH in order to facilitate the
penetration of tanning agents like chromium. lowering of the pH value to the acidic region. Must
be done in the presence of salts.
Depickling stage: this step involves the raising of the pH level from the acidic region for making
penetration of certain tanning agents easy.
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Tanning

Tanning is the stage in leather production that converts the skin proteins into stable material
which is saved from putrefaction for various products. The materials which are mostly used for
tanning is chromium, it leaves the leather in hue of blue also called wet blue.
Crusting

This is the stage in which the skin is lubricated, thinned and retanned (Campardelli et al., 2020).
The sub-process of crusting includes coloring. The chemicals added in this stage needed to be
fixed in a place. 
Surfacing

In this stage a layer is applied on the skin after crusting. According to the tanners, it is a finishing
stage which includes the following: Oiling, brushing, padding, impregnation, buffing, spraying,
roller coating, curtain coating, polishing, plating, embossing, and lastly ironing.

Coloring
The tanning agent used determines the type of leather coloring. Yellowish color is
achieved through oil and fat tanning, tannin of plants give brown shade, while synthetic tanning
gives leather a white tone, and chromium tanning gives grey-bluish shade. The leather is dyed
after tanning according to customer preference. There are two main methods used for coloration.
The first involves the pigmentation of the leather through the binding process, while the second
method involves the use of color dyes. Usually after tanning, the leather is color dyed (Prokein,
2021). The ink like liquid used for textiles is used for leather. The leather pieces are immersed in
dyes over the rotating drums. During this process, it has to made sure that excess color is
extracted out and dye has to be fixed. There is another process called the aniline dye which is a
transparent liquid, the leather absorbs it without forming liquid. The leather types such as:
nubuck, suede, aniline, are dyed this way.
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References
Brudzyńska, P., Sionkowska, A., & Grisel, M. (2022). Leather Dyeing by Plant-Derived
Colorants in the Presence of Natural Additives. Materials, 15(9), 3326.
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1944/15/9/3326
Campardelli, R., Trucillo, P., Iorio, M., & Reverchon, E. (2020). Leather dyeing using a new
liposome-based process assisted by dense gas technology. Dyes and Pigments, 173, 107985.
https://journals.uc.edu/index.php/JALCA/article/view/3834
Mella, B., Barcellos, B. S. D. C., da Silva Costa, D. E., & Gutterres, M. (2018). Treatment of
leather dyeing wastewater with associated process of
coagulation-flocculation/adsorption/ozonation. Ozone: Science & Engineering, 40(2), 133-140.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01919512.2017.1346464
Prokein, M., Dyes, T., Renner, M., & Weidner, E. (2021). Waterless leather dyeing with dense
carbon dioxide as solvent for dyes. The Journal of Supercritical Fluids, 178, 105377.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S089684462100219