New members welcomed at APLF

This year’s Hong Kong fair presented an opportunity to meet new members from Germany and Thailand.

It was all change in Hong Kong this year as the Asia Pacific Leather Fair was rebranded in its 33rd edition to now officially be called ‘APLF Leather & Materials+’. The organisers considered that the main driving trend for footwear and garments worldwide was now sports casual or athleisure, and so the decision was taken after last year’s fair to revamp its traditional components sector to cater to this trend by renaming it ‘Materials+’. Although SATRA experts always visit this event, it was decided to participate in the changes, so we took a stand in the new Material+ halls.

APLF Leather & Materials+ drew 856 exhibiting companies from 46 countries, 222 of this total being new to the event. A wide variety of products and services were on show, including raw hides, finished skins, semi-finished and finished leather, synthetic and natural materials, footwear components, processing chemicals and dyes, tanning and shoe machinery, technology, tools and testing services. In addition to the main exhibition, the associated Fashion Access show attracted 262 exhibitors from 22 countries and featured national pavilions from Bangladesh, China, India, Japan, Pakistan and South Korea.

In addition to exhibiting, SATRA was invited by the organisers to deliver a seminar. This was presented by Christine Powley-Williams and Peter Allen with the title of ‘Supporting product development from concept to consumers’. The session was well attended, and some very interesting discussions were held with a number of attendees who had some product ideas they wanted to pursue with SATRA’s research team – a service that members can access on a contract basis.

Meeting new members

The APLF show also provided the opportunity to meet up with two new SATRA members – Helcor Leder-Tec and Pattanachai Chemical Co Ltd. Helcor is a German footwear leather tannery established in 1990 which produces technical finished splits using a patented aqueous finishing process. This involves producing a razor-thin polyurethane film which is applied to silicone moulds, and then bonded to the split using heat and pressure. Pattanachai is a Thai company located in Sam Phran that produces a variety of cements, stretch sprays and adhesives designed for the footwear manufacturing sector.

Publishing Data

This article was originally published on page 12 of the May 2017 issue of SATRA Bulletin.

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