The deliming, bating process

The liming chemicals in the pelt are neutralized during the deliming through the use of acidic reacting salts and/or weak organic as well as inorganic acids or with carbon dioxides.

The fiber tissue of the pelt is cleaned by enzymes from scud and opened-up.

The tanning process

The tanning agents bond chemically with the fiber tissue of the hide during the tanning process and cross-link the fibers as a result. The hides is thereby modify in a way so that they remain permanently flexible, i.e. neither rots nor parches in heat.

The raw hide became in this way leather. The chrome tannage, applied since the 1960s, has including the combined tanning procedures today worldwide with appr. 85% share the main importance, as a leather type can be produced with this process that can be refined for most of the characteristics the market is requiring. Only complex-forming salts of the trivalent chromium have a tanning effect.

Further, tanning processes with glutardialdehyde, vegetable tanning agents, fats or aluminum salts have also a larger importance.