Rawhide

Tanners work with rawhide obtained from the animal. This is irreversibly tanned to make leather as a finished product of the tannery. For bovine leather, roughly 200 to 300 kilos of leather are produced from 1,000 kilos of raw skin. Only the leather skin for leather production can be used. The removed layers are waste of the original raw skin.

In order that a removed skin can be further processed into leather, it must be as damage-free as possible. Damages caused by illness or injury or by incorrect handling in the slaughterhouse during cutting or preservation, reduce the value for the tanner.

When removing the skin, the cutting must be carried out in such a way that the tanner can produce a hide as large as it possibly can be. Associations of the Leather Industry tries to teach the slaughterers the optimal cutting of cattle through posters. But there is often a mistake in cutting, because the cutting of the skin is mainly performed by unskilled forces. In the meantime, this process is increasingly being carried out by "withdrawal machines", which make it possible to subtract the skin as a whole from the animal. The results are then practically cut and defect-free hides.

Raw hides are sold by dealers. At the trading and auction sites, the raw material is then assembled into lots of similar hides and skins. Rawhides for furniture leather are calculated in Germany per kilo. According to a tannery for high-quality furniture leather, the price per kilo of raw skin amounted to approx. 3 € in 2015.