Tk1,000cr rawhide by-products wasted a year

Once rawhide byproducts were valuable items when tannery was in Hazaribagh, but now it is being dumped into landfills as its demand fell drastically.

Industry insiders say as rawhide byproducts of around Tk1, 000 crore are wasted every year the entrepreneurs have shifted their focus to other sectors.

It is happening as Bangladesh Small and Cottage Industries Corporation (BSCIC) has failed to allocate plots to entrepreneurs in Savar Tannery State after their relocation from Hazaribagh.

Once dozens of factories used to process byproducts and generate revenue of above Tk1, 000 crore a year.

“As I know a few factories are still in operation in Savar while the rest of them are not with the sector anymore,” Bangladesh Tanners Association (BTA) General Secretary Md Shakawat Ullah told The Business Post.

People involved in the sector said after cattle hides are skinned out rawhide merchandisers remove head skin, horn, tail and fat from the hide.

Horn is used to make capsule caps, brush is made with tails and head skin is used to make several leather goods such as money bag, ladies’ bag while fat is used in the textile sector and soup industry.

Besides, byproduct of rawhide is also used to prepare animal feed to add protein but now its demand is met through import.

After separating byproducts, buyers collect them from the rawhide merchandiser to process them. Most importantly processing should be completed within 24 hours after they are removed.

Entrepreneurs purchase per piece of head skin for Tk100 and sell for Tk250- Tk300 after processing.

They also sell per square-foot goat skin at Tk90. Average size of a goat skin is above 3 square feet. Around 300 factories processed the product in Hazaribugh and thousands of workers were involved in the sector.

However, currently 25-26 entrepreneurs are involved in processing byproducts of rawhide due to crisis of space.

“Every year we process over 40 lakh of cattle rawhide byproducts but now we are processing around one lakh. Our business is almost ruined due to BSCIC’s mismanagement,” said Md Mohiuddin, General Secretary of Leather and Leather Goods Manufacturers Cooperative Society, the apex body of the sector.

“If it had allocated land to us, we would have been able to continue the business. Since 2018, we have not been able to do the business and this is why the skin remains unsold,” he said.

It’s around 11 pm of Eid-ul Azha day in Posta in the capital that The Business Post correspondent found rawhide merchandisers piling hundreds of thousands of the byproducts on the street.

The city corporation team was taking them away to dump them into landfills. The same scenario was found in the Savar Tannery State area.

Not only byproducts but also thousands of goatskins are also dumped into landfills due to shortage of buyers though they are valuable for both local and international market.

“We earned crores taka by selling goatskins and byproducts but now we have to spend money to remove it. This loss is not only for us but also for the country,” Md Murad Hossain, proprietor of Islam Traders, told The Business Post.

He says every item of rawhide is valuable but now ‘we earn by selling only hides. This situation turned bad in 2018.

In 2003, the Bangladesh government took an initiative to shift the tannery factories out of the capital city following protests from environmentalists expressing concerns over the dumping of high levels of toxic chemicals by these tanneries into the river and soil of the area.

The government allocated 199 acres of land in Savar, around 16 km to Hazaribagh, to set up modern leather industries under the Bangladesh Small and Cottage Industries Corporation (BSCIC).

On April 8, 2017, BSCIC cut off all facilities of Hazaribagh tannery to force them to move to Savar following a high court rule demanding the relocation at any cost.

The move came amid allegations by tannery owners that Savar wasn’t ready for production at that time.

A total of 154 tanneries out of 222 have been allocated plots in the Savar Leather Industries Park so far. According to BSCIC, the government will acquire another 200 acres to relocate the rest of them.

Industry insiders claims that rawhide byproducts factory is subordinate to tannery and to set up its processing factory it needs separate land.

But the government neither allocated land to them nor gave permission to them to set factory outside of tannery.

Besides, it needs crores of taka to set up a byproduct factory but the Rajdhani Unnayan Kartripakkh imposed a bar to selling land of Hazaribugh tannery resulting in the financial crisis.

Forhad Hossain, proprietor of FB leather, told The Business Post that some tanneries had started processing byproduct with rawhide to sell feed manufacturers but now it now came to stop due to chromium issues.

It is totally different way to process and this is why its needs separate factories, he added.

Ashikur Rahman, Managing Director of Tajin Leather Corporation told The Business Post, “If the government allocates land to all entrepreneurs who were in Hazaribugh we will be able to save thousands of crores of taka from the waste.”

In addition, the sector will also need policy support, he said. “If the government ensures them, we can invest in the sector,” he added.