Stakeholders Confident of Shs.130B Leather Industry

Smuggling of leather to West Africa for food, continues to hurt the leather value chain, with tanneries gasping for a share of the lucrative business.
Members to the Tanners Association of Kenya, led by Alpharama Tanneries Managing Director, Sambasiva Rao, noted with concern the escalating smuggling that had reduced their production to 20 percent of their capacities, calling for an action.
The members today held stakeholders’ meeting with officials from the State Department for Industry led by Industrialization Secretary, Prof Erastus Gatebe, with the later promising immediate action geared towards securing raw materials for the tanneries for value addition.
“Already, the government has zero-rated duty on importation of chemicals used in tanning the leather and more wins are expected with the creation of a Secretariat at the department, to ensure the stakeholders are directly involved in decisions surrounding the value chain,” noted Prof. Gatebe, who welcomed the stakeholders, previously under State Department of Livestock, back to SDI.
The teams forged a common front in addressing bottle necks and securing the sector’s potential of employing 200, 000 Kenyans, while increasing its contribution to GDP to Shs130 billion, by 2030.
Kenya’s leather value chain enjoys an abundance of hides and skins with the country ranking 11th worldwide in herd size, standing at 80 million.
The Kenanie Leather Industrial Park (KLIP) in Machakos County, is expected to take off most of the hides is set to offer a state-of-the-art industry cluster to leather investors, with tanneries and warehouses ready for occupation.
The SDI team was represented by Directors Gideon Oele and Stanley Koske and Jimmy Odhiambo, among others.
Also at the meeting was Tanners Association of Kenya Vice Chair Robert Njoka, Kenya Association of Manufacturers Manager Jackson Wambua, representatives of BATA, Umoja Shoes, Leather traders and  other stakeholders.