Fabrizio Nuti,President of UNIC, Italy.
2024 is coming to an end, and Leather Insiders team could not leave the floor to the president of the National Union of Tanning Industry, Fabrizio Nuti, to deepen how the Italian tanning industry has lived and faced past months.
Italy is currently going through a difficult situation, what is the main cause of this crisis?
It is clearly a structural crisis. The luxury mechanism has become a little stuck and we, as main suppliers of this sector, suffer from this situation. We did not expect this but it is still possible to think that after at least two decades of uninterrupted growth, often in double digits, for almost all luxury brands, the market (or rather the consumer) may have a period of reflection creating a plateau of consumption. It’s a season over, I think, and there will be a change of
direction in the relationship with the consumer.
How would you describe the current situation of Italian tanneries? What should the same tanneries do to see a light at the end of this tunnel?
The situation, as I said, is at a stalemate. It is obvious that for individual tanneries, although innovative, sustainable, competitive and pro-positive like no other in the world, the recovery is achieved through the strategies and actions of individual brands that must find that appeal to the consumer that now seems to have been somewhat blurred. What keeps me confident and positive is the fact that anyway, in the past, more or less all fashion brands have been able to find solutions to each challenge they have found on their way by demonstrating a spirit of adaptation to new situations really exceptional. Let’s look, for example, at the Covid crisis of 2020 and the financial crisis of 2008 from which they have managed to come out of it reinvigorated and stronger than ever. As I said before, there will have to be a breakthrough but I have no doubt that this will happen.
What are your priorities as UNIC president for the coming year?
Few priorities, but very important. The first place is certainly the EUDR issue that if implemented as written would have devastating repercussions on our sector. Secondly, to ensure that all the support and assistance measures which have been requested from our administrations are implemented quickly and effectively. Then still continue the path, already begun, to counteract, refute and finally clarify the incorrect calculation of environmental impact attributed to leather by many organisms, which, I would say, guilty, continue to propose, and we will prove it with irrefutable scientific evidence. Finally, there will be the effort to bring our permanent headquarters in Europe, in Brussels, so that we can be much closer to where important decisions affecting us are taken.
Finally, a necessary mention of the EUDR. Following your valuable speech at the UNECE debate in Geneva on November, 13th 2024, would you like to add anything more for our readers?
The EUDR, as I said, would be a catastrophe for our sector. As UNIC, we have been working (and will continue to do so throughout 2025) in the European context to try to make new members of the European Parliament – who probably have not taken yet – a good look at the text and, consequently, the impact that this would have on our world, in view of a much-desired revision of this regulation. One thing, however, I must repeat loudly hoping that our interlocutors can reflect well and that many are not at all clear. I am referring to the fact that the EUDR regulation does not apply to the finished product, but only to hides, so that, if implemented in the original text, it would have the sole effect of moving the tannery from Europe to countries outside Europe where the finished product would also be packaged, which would then enter the community without any constraint, effectively vanishing and making absolutely no effort to combat deforestation that was intended. This effect, easy to predict, is also all too evident and I honestly cannot understand how it could have been written a text of the kind without predicting its obvious consequences.
A heartfelt thanks to Fabrizio Nuti for having reiterated, once again, the inconsistencies of the EUDR regulation, as well as the enormous difficulties that our tanning sector would have to face. We hope that the breakthrough mentioned by the President can take place as soon as possible.