Portuguese leather goods company Belcinto has won the European Sustainability Award for small and medium enterprises (SMEs), writes ILM.

The first edition of the competition was promoted by assurance firms Tranquilidade and Grupo Generali, in partnership with local media and aimed at highlighting sustainable SMEs in Portugal.

Honourable mentions went to private capital company Promecel, which works in the electrical and mechanical components sectors, and ALGAPlus, which sustainably farms seaweed species from the Atlantic coast.

Belcinto won the award partly because it was the first in the Portuguese sector to obtain environmental certification, with a focus on reducing its energy and water consumption, bringing the former down by 40% in 2022.

The leather goods business also launched Leather Goods by Belcinto, which Manager Ana Maria Vasconcelos said creates products “only from the leftovers raw materials from other collections by reusing them and fully incorporating them, without generating new ones in the process”.

Belcinto was founded in 1961 with the aim to produce leather goods for the national market, and today exports almost all of its production, primarily to Europe and Japan.