Raw deal: Small tanneries shut shop, many lose jobs

The beef scare is hitting the leather industry hard. Importers from Germany, France, Italy and the US, unsure about supplies from India, are looking to players such as Pakistan.
"There's a raw-material scarcity," says M Rafeeque Ahmed, chairman, Council for Leather Exports (CLE), adding the industry is experiencing a 15% slowdown because of a shortage of hides.Puran Dawar, president, Agra Footwear Manufacturers and Exporters Chamber, concurs saying current conditions are far from conducive. This shows in the numbers. Export of finished leather from the eastern region (2015-16 first quarter) is down 18.5% against the same period last year. Fall in footwear export has been steep at 73%.
"Buyers are no longer confident about placing orders. One of the largest foreign exchange earners, the leather industry is under threat because of a man-made crisis," says Ramesh Juneja, regional chairman-east, CLE. The commerce ministry's target of doubling export from $6.5 billion in 2014-15 to $13 billion in 2019-20, made under PM Modi's Make in India project, he says, "may now get jeopardised".
Kanpur, with over 400 tanneries, is suffering. Many small units have shut shop, others are laying off daily wagers, says Hafizur Rehman, president, Kanpur Small Tanners' Association.
He says while the cost of hides has spiked, UP's failure to provide security has added to tanners' woes. "Recently, a man transporting hides was beaten up by a cow protection group," Rehman says. After Kolkata and Chennai, the best hides are from UP.
Though cow slaughter is legal in Bengal, which accounts for nearly half of leather exports, it sources hides from states like UP. "Bengal generates only 35% of the hide processed here. Units with export commitments are in a fix. As deliveries stall, their goodwill gets diluted," says Imran Ahmed Khan, of CLE, adding some exports are for mega brands like Louis Vuitton, Prada and Gucci.

"Exports to Germany have fallen 24%; France 20%. Not so long ago, leather units in Kolkata refused orders. Now we're hunting for orders," Khan says.
Fayyaz Qureshi, a hide trader from Aurangabad, says before Maharashtra's beef ban, 70,000 to 80,000 skins were procured every month from Marathwada alone. "Now we've stopped buying any type of animal skin, fearing right-wing activists and police. It'd take much effort to prove the skin we bought isn't of a cow," he explains.
The magnitude of scare is such that the practice of farmers selling dead cattle has stopped at many places. Hide traders would buy dead animals and sell the hides to tanneries. "I can't risk my life for a few hundred rupees," says Shaukat Qureshi, hide dealer from Jaipur.
(INPUTS FROM SUBHRO NIYOGI, KOLKATA, APARNA RAMALINGAM, CHENNAI, SYED RIZWANULLAH, AURANAGABAD, SHOEB KHAN, JAIPUR, ISHITA MISHRA, AGRA & FAIZ SIDDIQUI, KANPUR)