Given that the Unió Empresarial de l'Anoia (UEA) sits on the National Water Board (set up by the Generalitat de Catalunya) together with other business entities and associations, a meeting was held on Thursday 1 February in order to agree and unify criteria with all the companies of the Anoia and to be able to put forward proposals at the various sessions held by these boards, which serve to address water policies and the restrictions affecting the business and industrial fabric in the face of this emergency and concern. The meeting was attended by several representatives of companies and different economic sectors of the area, among them Leather Cluster Barcelona.

The cluster is part of this UEA Water Working Committee, joining forces and contributing all its experience and knowledge of the sound management and saving of water. In this regard, after almost twenty years in operation, the treatment plant of Igualadina de Depuració i Recuperació S.L. (IDR), one of the pioneering plants in Europe in the treatment of industrial wastewater, has become a benchmark for the water industry.

During these years, the plant, which every day treats the water generated in the leather transformation process of the Igualada tanneries that are members of Leather Cluster Barcelona, together with that of other industries, has been visited by sustainability technicians and professionals from more than 30 different countries.

In this context, in which the growing problem of water supply in Catalonia is a serious concern, and within the Zero Waste horizon for the tanning industry, IDR and Leather Cluster Barcelona have for months been working on a project to give a second life to treated water, with the construction of a Water Reclamation Plant (ERA).

This ambitious project to build an ERA consists of treating the effluent of the IDR treatment plant (the already treated water leaving the plant) in order to obtain a flow of ultrafiltered water and also reverse-osmosis water (practically pure water), plus another of salt water, both reusable by the tanning industry or for other purposes.

After the reclaimed water of the IDR treatment plant became available at the end of 2023 for use in the tanneries' hide-processing operations, Igualadina de Depuració i Recuperació and the leather cluster have continued to make progress in research for the ERA project.

In this regard, this February, with the Catalan Water Partnership (CWP), the Catalan water cluster, a delegation from Leather Cluster Barcelona together with its members IDR and Intraval visited the company DuPont in Tarragona.

The multinational DuPont Water Solutions, a leader in water solutions, has many years of experience in ultrafiltration, nanofiltration and reverse osmosis products, among other systems.

During the visit, the Leather Cluster Barcelona committee complemented its knowledge with a 360º view of all the technical possibilities in membrane technologies available to the multinational corporation.

Leather Cluster Barcelona is an environment of competitive cooperation for promoting cross-cutting, transformative strategic projects with the aim of driving the ecosystem of the Catalan leather sector. The cluster is an entity accredited under the Catalonia Clusters programme and is supported by Acció.