THE STORY

The first company of the Italian Leather Group, Italian Leather SpA, was established in 1986 in Bitonto, in the province of Bari, where Attilio D’Apolito started a facility specializing in the finishing phase of bovine leathers.

By 1990, production reached 3.5 million square meters per year, and in 1991, with the acquisition of Valdalpone, a Veneto tannery group with two plants in Northern Italy (one for tanning and the other for finishing leathers), it exceeded 6.5 million square meters per year, mainly marketed in Europe and the USA.

Since the early 1990s, the company has invested in Research and Development projects, specializing in the production of leathers particularly resistant to wear and tear from time, light, and mechanical friction. In Germany alone, in the 1990s, more than 5.5 million square meters of Long Life® branded leather, a special type of cleanable leather so durable that it could be guaranteed for five years to the end consumer, were sold for the furniture market.

During the same period, thanks to the experience gained in producing particularly resistant leathers, the group began producing leathers for automotive upholstery, aimed at major European brands.

In 1995, Curtarsa S.A. was completed in Argentina, one of the most modern and largest tanneries in the world (with a production capacity of over 10,000 bovine hides per day) with a completely automated industrial process and the highest quality standards.

In 1998, with an investment of over 60 billion Italian lire (about 30 million euros today), the Eco Leather SpA plant was started in Monopoli for the retanning and finishing of leathers from the Argentina and Veneto plants. Eco Leather, in addition to marketing leathers for the Furniture and Automotive sectors, develops product and process innovation projects in the R&D and EDP centers.

In the early 2000s, Eco Leather SpA developed the production of special leathers for steering wheels and chrome-free leathers, to which it added, as a value-added service, the electronic cutting of leathers for Automotive.

In 2004, Italthierry Auto Leather SpA was born, a joint venture between Italian Leather Group SpA and Michel Thierry S.A., for the marketing of Automotive leathers in the French market.

In 2012 in Timisoara (Romania), with an investment of over 5 million euros and entirely controlled by Italian Leather Group SpA, Quality Leather Srl was established for the cutting and accessory processing in the production of Automotive leathers.