Stahl’s Ympact® range consists of a full range of 15 beamhouse, wet-end and finishing chemicals that have been developed to assist tanners and finishers increase the biomass content of their final leathers using a range of biobased ingredients derived from renewable sources.

The leather making process provides the treatment of collagen with various chemicals from the beamhouse to finishing. While the biomass content of collagen is 100%, the biomass content of the final leather article depends on the products or chemicals used in the process and is more challenging for chrome-free leathers, where the organic content is higher in comparison to chrome tanned leathers.

In retanning, vegetable tanning agents and natural fatliquors have been used for a long time. However, in most modern leather articles, they are combined or even entirely replaced with fossil-based, wet-end products for performance reasons.

With a set of 15 selected Stahl wet-end products with a biomass content greater than 25%, including syntans, polymers, fatliquors and a neutralization product, products within the Stahl Ympact® family contain less than 1% volatile organic compounds (VOCs). We achieved a biomass content in crust leather of 92%, even though we applied our own organic tanning system, which is fossil-based. With a standard wet-white crust made with only fossil-based products, the biomass content was 76%.

To read the rest of this article by Stahl, click on ILM – Biomass content