9 July 2025
From first audits to increasing transparency and the resulting improvements to the leather industry’s environmental impact, here Kenny Crack of Charles F Stead & Co describes in his own words how the Yorkshire-based tannery went from initial scepticism about its first audit in 2007 to reaping big benefits from Leather Working Group certification today.
“Our major customer here at Charles F Stead tannery is Clarks, and we’ve been involved with manufacturing the leather for their desert boots and other shoes since the 1950s.
“At first, when Clarks asked us to engage with Leather Working Group back in 2007, we were quite cautious about being audited. I suppose this is because it felt intrusive.
“But fast forward to today and there have been a lot of benefits from gaining certification. Over what has been almost 20 years of being audited, the Leather Working Group certification has helped us create a much clearer roadmap for continuous improvement throughout everything we do. It has also helped satisfy our customer base in the sense that, yes, we are an old traditional company in Leeds that dates back to 1904, but we are also extremely diligent about how we make our product – and we take sustainability very seriously.
“Getting audited has strengthened the case for making much-needed investments into our equipment as well, allowing us to create a genuine benchmark against the wider industry as we continue to grow and move with the times. For example, in 2015/16 we invested over £1.4 million to build and install a new automated dyehouse to control our processing, which allowed significant reductions in our water and energy use. Being audited basically brings these savings to the forefront, which benefits us as a company and the industry as a whole.
“Transparency has become increasingly necessary in recent years and we’re operating in a different world now. Confidence is being gained in sharing information, and instead of feeling like audits are intrusive, we can now embrace them and take them as an opportunity to show how far we have progressed.”
Learn more about Charles F Stead & Co here.
This column is part of Leather Working Group’s range of articles to celebrate its 20th birthday – look out for more stories from our global community appearing on our website soon…