Following a brief introduction by ICT and CICB President, Wolfgang Goerlich, the congress was kicked off by M V Pratini de Moraes, Board Member of JBS Group and former Brazilian Minister for Agriculture who explained JBS’s position inf the Brazilian meat and cattle industry. ‘We want to see Brazil add value to its products and start to sell based on a European model’, Pratini de Moraes said. ‘At JBS we want to add value to our products including hides.’
Pratini de Moraes outlined Brazil’s plans to grow trees and grasses for cattle to feed through the country to make farming more sustainable.
The congress is broken down into seven sessions following the whole leather supply chain from the slaughterhouse through to the trends in the luxury leather sector.
Ron Sauer of TheSauerReport said that the leather industry and consumer consumption is moving from Europe, Japan and North America to emerging markets such as the BRIC countries. The demand for hides and skins is high and in the future we will have start producing more hides and skins and that is based on future demand for meat. In his closing remarks Sauer said that if you to promote the leather industry in the future the industry has to promote the consumption of meat, particularly beef.
The World Leather Congress follows the World Footwear Congress which took place, November 7-8.
