Company
Curtidos Badia is a family business founded in 1889. The company is under the direction of Xavier Badia, who is the fourth generation to run the business. Curtidos Badia is one of the leading companies in the leather industry, as well as an acknowledged international leader in the fashion and high-end leather industries. The company is known around the globe for the quality of its leather: Curtidos Badia currently exports over 85% of its production, and its main clients include the most important national and international brands in fashion and luxury leather goods. Nowadays, leather tanned at Badia can easily be found in the most select leather articles in the most exclusive shops in the globe.
Tanneries like Curtidos Badia play a fundamental role in the transformation of the fashion industry production process, and are key actors in its value chain.
Their role in the transformation of the production process is fundamental because hide is a food industry residue that tanneries recycle and turn into a stable consumer product. The tanning industry is a recycling industry: it recycles animal hides –which are a derivative of slaughterhouses– to transform them into raw material for the manufacture of fashion products that are useful to society, such as shoes, belts, bags, jackets, etc.
Curtidos Badia is part of the historical Igualada Leather Cluster, which can be traced back to writings from 1340. Igualada is a world-renowned city in the leather industry. Its cluster combines quality, history, industry, a university, research and innovation, and environmental and social responsibility.
High-end fashion and leather companies choose Igualada because they know that the leather they buy to manufacture their exclusive accessories and products comes from a city with a 700-year history in the industry. Igualada has vast experience working with social and environmental responsibility and investing on the professional training of workers (the Escuela Superior de Curtidos was founded back in 1958), on Research, Development, and Innovation (the Centro Tecnológico de Curtidos was established in 1962), on the application of clean technologies, on the biological purification of waste water, and on minimizing and reusing waste.
Our city leather industry model is known around the world: the Igualada Leather Cluster is a successful case study in the cluster formation program organized by the European Foundation for Cluster Excellence, and it is also part of the syllabi of prestigious higher education institutions like Harvard and IESE Business School.
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