Grupo SIFU and Leather Cluster Barcelona are promoting this Shared Value and Circular Economy project

One of the challenges for both the leather sector and the fashion sector is finding an outlet for the finished leather offcuts generated by the manufacturing industry and its value chain.

The leather sector forms part of the strategic field of the design and fashion industries and, in this context, Leather Cluster Barcelona wishes to lead this new project for the reuse of finished leather offcuts.

This is a Shared Value and Circular Economy project, with the purpose of having a positive impact on society and fostering a balance between business competitiveness and social and environmental improvement.

Shared Value, because the project seeks to promote the participation of people with functional diversity in the making of these new leather articles produced from offcuts.

Circular Economy, because the project aims to recycle the leather offcuts left over from the making of fashion and craft products in order to generate new creations from them and give these materials a second life.

To take on this difficult challenge, the cluster will develop the project together with Grupo SIFU and with the collaboration of Nquart Leather and La Gaspar, the municipal school of art and design of Igualada.

Grupo SIFU is a benchmark company for its work to improve the welfare and social inclusion of people with functional diversity and, above all, of those with particular difficulties in entering employment.

Grupo SIFU’s mission is to promote the integration of people with functional diversity into the labour market and to work for the training, education and development of this group of people in the social and employment spheres, while providing quality and socially competitive services to its customers. Grupo SIFU today employs some 9,500 people, more than 5,000 of them with disabilities, and serves more than 3,000 public and private sector customers in Spain, France and Andorra.

In order to valorise the leather offcuts left over from the making of fashion products and transform them into completely new products, the Leather Cluster Barcelona members Nquart Leather and La Gaspar, the municipal school of art and design of Igualada, will guide Grupo SIFU’s workers in design, creativity, prototyping and training in craftsmanship and leather.

The project for the reuse of finished leather offcuts should make it possible to lay the foundations for the creation of a business unit, with the aim of giving a valuable application to leather offcuts in order to create and market consumer goods, additionally generating a possible new line of business from the marketing of the articles produced.

Leather Cluster Barcelona is an environment of competitive cooperation for promoting cross-cutting and transformative strategic projects with the aim of driving forward the ecosystem of the Catalan leather sector. The cluster is an accredited body within the Catalonia Clusters programme and has the support of Acció.