Leather and Leather Processing

With a strong tradition of leather processing dating back to ancient times Turkey today is one of the leading countries in producing high quality leather products. In processing of sheep/goat leather, Turkey is second in Europe after Italy and fourth globally after Italy, China and India. 

 Besides, Turkey is the world leader in fur production with an annual processing capacity of 80 million units.

Leather processing industry in Turkey is environment friendly and has modern production infrastructure. In recent years there have been great improvements in research & development activities as well as in technology. Bigger companies have own research & development laboratories and are coming up with new techniques to use in their production lines. These studies and R& D activities in the sector are gaining momentum as Turkey takes over finished leather manufacturing from Italy and Spain.

 Advantages of Turkish leather processing industry in international competition are: 

• Organized industrial zones and environment friendly, technology based production infrastructure
• Ability to produce high quality products with the developed chemical industry
• Flexible production capability
• Production quality above the average level 

Footwear is an important sub sector of the leather industry. It employs 380 thousand workers approximately in 40.000 companies and has external and internal trade volume worth of 2.3 billions \$. Footwear industry has a share of 1.4% in total GDP.

Turkish footwear industry has great advantages.

• Ability to follow closely the Western concepts in terms of fashion and design,
• Existence of skilled and productive labour force,
• Ability to deliver orders in a short time,
• Ability of producing small orders, changing designs and styles rapidly,
• Flexible production approach,
• Ability to produce a wide range of footwear style