The current president of European leather industry body COTANCE, Manuel Ríos, travelled to Uzbekistan at the start of April to attend the UzCharmExpo event as a guest of honour.

COTANCE said it welcomed the work that Fakhriddin Boboev, chairman of the national leather industry association, Uzcharmsanoat, is doing to integrate the leather sector in the central Asian country into the international leather trade.

After joining the International Council of Tanners a couple of years ago and leading a trade delegation to visit the Lineapelle and Tanning Tech events in Milan in 2022, Mr Boboev extended an invitation to the COTANCE president to travel to Tashkent this year to see the UzCharmExpo at first hand, with the aim of strengthening ties between European tanners and their Uzbek counterparts.

At the formal opening of the event, Manuel Ríos (pictured) said: “Uzbekistan has great potential in the leather sector, with abundant raw material resources and a favourable trade and investment environment.”

He urged tanners in Uzbekistan to lend their weight to efforts to make the global leather industry more environmentally responsible and increasingly connected to the digital economy. He said: “Tomorrow, every sale of leather will have to include certified data about the material’s social and environmental performance.”

He then invited leather manufacturers in Uzbekistan to take advantage of the opportunities that the recently launched Leatech international master’s programme will present for helping develop future leather industry professionals.