A3 Leather Innovation Center at the Igualada-UdL University Campus creates an ecological leather tanning system using a waste product from olives

A waste product from olive oil extraction, olive pomace, contains tannins that make it possible to tan leather naturally. This is the conclusion of the OLIPO research project of the A3 Leather Innovation Center at the Igualada-UdL University Campus.

Making use of olive pomace, that is to say the remains of skins, stones and other residues of the raw material left over from olive oil extraction, “makes it possible to obtain top-quality ecological leather, while at the same time adding value to a problematic waste product of the olive oil extraction industry”, explains the director of the A3 Leather Innovation Center, the researcher Anna Bacardit.

The results of this research will facilitate the production of articles made with natural, locally sourced resources, contributing to the creation of more sustainable leather. This Circular Economy project – funded under ACCIÓ's ERA-Net MANUNET 2019 call (MNET 19/ ENER-3655) – therefore proposes establishing synergies between the leather and oil extraction industries.

This follows the recent success story of using animal hair as a fertiliser. As part of the Circular Economy project run by the Unió Empresarial de l'Anoia and the Catalan Waste Agency, Labin, a fertiliser company serving the agricultural sector, in collaboration with Leather Cluster Barcelona, carried out a research and development project that has successfully resulted in an industrial symbiosis process making it possible to turn a waste product into a resource and into the raw material for making a new product, in this case a biofertiliser for the agri-food sector.

A3 Leather Innovation Center at the Igualada-UdL campus, the internationally renowned technology partner of Leather Cluster Barcelona, develops projects promoting innovation, research, sustainability and the application of new technologies in the leather sector.