The Tuscan tannery, Antiba, moved its headquarters from Santa Croce sull’Arno to Ponte a Egola, investing almost 15 million euros. The new factory is 15 thousand square metres in area and is equipped with a system of interconnected machinery transfer. Production capacity has doubled to 100 thousand square meteres of finished leather per month and the number of employees has grown from 96 in 2021 to 130 direct and indirect jobs at present. Report by La Conceria.

The new Tannery Antiba factory is based around interconnected automation which offers more efficiency in terms of dosing chemicals as well as less raw material waste. There is control from the delivery of incoming goods to the finished leather itself.

For example, Antiba has equipped itself with a 4.0 shaving machine that measures every single leather in detail. From the wet department with a total of 29 drums, passing through the drying phase and ending with the finishing, everything is interconnected.

The chemical product dosing system is completely automated. The staff inserts the recipe and the plant, created specifically for Antiba, takes care of the preparation of the mixtures, while the handling of the chemical preparation for finishing is carried out by four automatic shuttles.

This system means that chemical dosages are precise and represent an estimated saving of 20% and it also guarantees more safety for the employees.

“The most challenging part of this new working method was the training of the personnel,” said Graziano Balducci, who heads up the company together with his brother Paolo.

The next step is the expansion of the laboratory, rom carrying out simple physical tests to include chemical ones, in line with the strategy of internalising all the tannery’s operations