World Leather Trends and Continental Shifts on Leather and Leather goods Production

The leather sector in the world has shown tremendous growth in recent times. In this paper a
major shift on leather and leather products development from Europe to Asia has been observed.
Areas of notable interest in the leading countries of the world indicates that total production of
leather is estimated 6.3billion Sqft for Europe (e.g. Italy, France, United Kingdom etc) and 12.1
billion Sqft for Asian countries (e.g. China, India, Vietnam, Korea, Japan etc). Other global regions
such as South America (0.83billion), North America (0.30billion) and Oceania (0.14billion) depict
various levels of production of leather footwear. For footwear (including synthetics) estimation
shows that there are 0.68 billion pairs in Europe and 9.98 billion pairs in Asia. Currently Africa is
not performing favourably, due to its weak legal and policy framework, poor infrastructure and
Government goodwill. However, there are minimal reforms in some of the countries in the
continent, seriously embarking on value adding initiatives worth noting. The projections indicated
in this paper depict a very promising future where the continent will play a major role in leather
and leather products development by 2030 and beyond, however critical strategic interventions
need to be addressed and these could include appropriate leather policies, capacity building,
technology transfers based on adaptable research and transformation of the sector to be more
competitive and also rejuvenate awareness in leather utility and associated benefits. This will be
tangible once the initiative is coupled up with loss recovery in the production chain, adoption of
appropriate leather processing techniques for high value products obtained from materials
sourced from free range and extensive animal husbandry systems. The future of leather and
leather goods will depend on how the sector is revitalized to became more competitive and
develop appealing products that will comfortably dislodge the synthetics.