On 9 and 10 April, Global Nature, the foundation dedicated to the protection of nature, visited the cluster’s leather ecosystem.

Based in Madrid, the Fundació Global Nature is a private, nationwide charitable and educational organisation committed to biodiversity, established in 1993 and registered with the Register of Foundations of the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and the Environment. Its founding purposes are the conservation, protection and management of the environment. The projects it develops contribute to the maintenance and recovery of threatened habitats and species, to technological innovation and to the recovery of traditional farming and livestock activities. As a charitable and educational foundation, its projects have a strong environmental education component, through courses, seminars, conferences, youth exchanges, work camps and the publication of research work.

The Global Nature delegation that visited Leather Cluster Barcelona was made up of Amanda del Rio Murillo, technical director of the foundation, and Ana Martínez Crucis, environmental technician.

Over these two days, meetings were held at the cluster’s headquarters, the Adoberia Bella, to exchange knowledge about the foundation’s and the cluster’s projects and to explore joint collaboration in areas ranging from sustainability and the circular economy to regenerative agriculture and traceability.

A meeting also took place between the foundation, the cluster and Vicenç Tonijuan, an executive of an important group of agri-food companies that are members of Leather Cluster Barcelona and are dedicated to the processing, preparation and marketing of meat products and by-products with a traceability system that guarantees strict, detailed knowledge of the product from the animal’s birth through to the end consumer.

During their stay in Igualada, the representatives of the Fundació Global Nature visited the Curtidos Badia tanneries, the Museu de la Pell, A3 Leather Innovation Center at the Igualada UdL Campus and IDR, the wastewater treatment plant of Igualada’s tanning industry, where they learned about the pilot plant for regenerating and giving a second life to treated water.

In addition, Jaume Suriñach, an executive of Adobinve, a member company of the cluster, gave a presentation on innovative methods of valorising leather and its by-products, following his visit to the integrated circular economy ecosystem of the JBS group in Brazil, centred on regenerative agriculture.

Finally, representatives of Global Nature and Leather Cluster Barcelona made a joint visit to the estate of the Fundació Catalunya La Pedrera, where a silvopasture project is being carried out at the foot of the Montserrat mountain.

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.