Leather Naturally updated stakeholders with its latest activities at APLF Dubai on March 3, and appealed to all members of the leather value chain to join the not-for-profit campaign, reports ILM.

Despite the pandemic, membership of the industry promotional campaign is reportedly still growing and Leather Naturally now has 140 stakeholders and a further 40 associate members.

Egbert Dikkers, outgoing Chair of the Management Committee, outlined some of the campaign’s activities over the past year and its plans for the future. He urged more companies and organisations that earn a living from the leather industry to join the organisation to ensure that brands, retailers and consumers understand the positive messages around leather.

“If, in the end, the consumer does not see that leather is a beautiful and natural material that they should use then all the other activities taken by businesses to do the right thing is wasted,” he said.

Other members of the management committee outlined Leather Naturally’s recent promotional campaigns, its educational programme and gave an update on its Metcha campaign, aimed at younger consumers. Information and resources are also reportedly being translated into Spanish and Portuguese.

In summary, Jon Clark, Chair of the Management Board, said: “I believe our industry is in a better place than it was two years ago. But we have to continue to build facts and data based on good science to get the message across about our beautiful product leather. As an industry, we all have to step up so that the consumer better understands our product and we can challenge the synthetics.”

For further information or to join Leather Naturally visit www.leathernaturally.org