Olive leather

Olive leather - Wet-Green - O'leaf tan

"Olive leather" and "Wet-Green" are registered trademarks. The tanning process is patented and protected by the brand "Wet-Green". It is also marketed as "O'leaf tan".

Olive leather is tanned with tannins made of olive leaves. Extracts with a tanning effect are obtained from the leaves by extraction and evaporation. The tannin is in liquid form. Olive leather is generally free of chromium, but is re-tanned synthetically or by using a vegetable tanning method

So far, olive tree leaves have not been used economically. 12 of the 15 million tons of olives harvested annually come from Europe. In Europe, approximately 1 million tonnes of olive leaves and 30 million tonnes of olive residues are produced annually. Enough for the tanning of approximately 600 million square meters of leather, which would be about 40% of world production. So far, these residues have been burned.

Olive leather is sold as aniline leather, semi-aniline leather or pigmented.

Porous, smooth olive leather. - Olive leather with vintage optics.

Finished olive napa leather and embossed pigmented olive leather. Both are processed at BMW.

In 2012, olive leather was presented to the market. In 2013 it was already processed for shoe leather, clothing leather, bag leather, furniture leather and car leather. In 2013, olive leather was used as a pigmented variant in the BMW i3. Also in 2020, the BMW i3 Urban Suite models had a leather interior with olive tanning.

From a chemical point of view, the tanning agent obtained from olive leaves is a natural masked glutaraldehyde and the tanning is more like a synthetic tanning.