One of the world’s leading specialty chemicals company, Lanxess is working with its customers to manage the phasing out of one of the EU’s recently banned Substances of Very High Concern (SVHC).
The chemical in question is NMP (N-Methyl-2-pyrrolidone) which the EU outlawed in 2011, with full removal from the leather process coming into effect this year. As a result of the ruling, leather manufacturers must now report on how they produce leather items without this substance.
Cologne-based Lanxess, which achieved sales of €9.7 billion in 2017 and about 19,200 employees in 25 countries, says it is rolling out suitable alternatives that remove the need to make any compromises with regard to the quality of the finished leather. NMP was traditionally used in industry for the production of polyurethane coatings as a co-solvent, but Dr Martin Kleban, HSEQ representative in the Leather business unit at Lanxess says the work to remove it from the supply chain is already a long way down the track:
“We extensively removed NMP from the leather chemicals in our product range a long time ago. By developing suitable alternatives, we offer a range of over 30 NMP-free binders for finishing and enable our customers to operate consistently without the use of NMP. We have been offering solutions in accordance with the REACH regulation for many years.”
