History
Many a little makes mickle
History
Italy Footwear Limited
Prior to 1972, there were 35 medium to large and about 25 cottages to small tanneries in Bangladesh. The medium and large tanneries were engaged mainly in wet blue processing for export. The cottage and small type units used to produce low grade finished leather mainly for domestic market or sometimes processed wet blue for big tanners. With the emergence of Bangladesh in 1971, the non-Bengali tanners abandoned their tanneries and a vacuum was created in the leather sector. The Government took over 30 abandoned tanneries and formed Tanneries Corporation to overcome the crisis. Later on, the nationalized tanneries were disinvested to the private entrepreneurs during the late 70’s and early part of 80’s as per the Government policy of privatization of industries.
Prior to 1972, there were 35 medium to large and about 25 cottages to small tanneries in Bangladesh. The medium and large tanneries were engaged mainly in wet blue processing for export. The cottage and small type units used to produce low grade finished leather mainly for domestic market or sometimes processed wet blue for big tanners. With the emergence of Bangladesh in 1971, the non-Bengali tanners abandoned their tanneries and a vacuum was created in the leather sector. The Government took over 30 abandoned tanneries and formed Tanneries Corporation to overcome the crisis. Later on, the nationalized tanneries were disinvested to the private entrepreneurs during the late 70’s and early part of 80’s as per the Government policy of privatization of industries.
Till 1980-81, the leather export of the country was almost entirely composed of wet blue. Considering the potentials of this sector favoring conversion of wet blue in crust and finished leather and subsequently to leather products, Government imposed export duty on wet blue in 1977-78 and granted incentives to the crust and finished leather export in 1980-81 in the form of Duty Draw Back, Export Performance Benefit (XPB), income tax holiday reduced import duty on leather machinery.
In later years, for rapid development of this sector particularly emphasizing on the switching over to production of crust / finished leather, the Government formulated a policy putting a ban on the export of wet blue leather from the country after June 1990. Simultaneously efforts were initiated by the Government regarding modernization of leather tanning industry through BMRE, offering certain facilities for the purpose. Utilizing the given facilities of the government of both fiscal and non-fiscal nature, quite a number of firms developed their leather processing facilities employing skilled technicians and worker, besides bringing in latest machinery for the production and tanning of crust/finished leather.
From the early part of 90’s a few firms ventured to produce some selected leather goods like wallets, belts, lady’s hand bags and gloves for the overseas markets and started exporting in very limited quantity. During the muddle of 90’s, few leather shoe manufacturing units with modern machinery were set up in the country initiating production and export of quality shoe from the country.
The leather industry has three broad category of items i.e. the crust/finished leather, leather goods and leather footwear. There had been a significant development in building up crust and finished leather processing capacity in leather industry during the last 2 decades. A good number of tanneries have been modernized, along with the establishment of some new ones. There had been genuine progress in the field of leather goods as quite a number of firms are now presently engaged in the manufacturing of wide range of products. A satisfactory development has taken place in the leather footwear manufacturing industry also. A number of leather shoe units have been set up during the last couple of years.