Zakłady Garbarskie SKOTAN S.A.

The SKOTAN tannery in Skoczow is situated in Skoczow in the Katowice Voivodship. The company employs 210-220 persons. The authority for SKOTAN SA Skoczow is the powiat office in Cieszyn, De-partment for Environmental Protection and Forestry. The enterprise processes calf- and pigskins from raw material or wet blue scal-ing of raw skins. The stock of machinery owned by the tannery also allows production of other grain leathers with a small surface, e.g. goat skins, sheep skins or bovine sides. SKOTAN has a maximum capacity of 15 tons of raw skins per day. In year 2000 3500 tons raw skin was manufactured, which corre-spond to approximately 14 tons per day if the production is running 250 days per year.

During the tanning process the skins are going through some mechanical proc-esses and the skins are treated with different chemicals to get the skin into the right quality. The skins are first prepared for tanning and are afterwards led to the Beam house where the skins are soaked and treated with lime. Before tan-ning the skins also undergo a mechanical treatment where remnants from the skin are removed. The tanning is made with chrome (III).

The raw materials are primarily skins and water and different chemical agents. The wastewater from these chemical baths is the major environmental impact from the production because the wastewater can pollute the soil and ground wa-ter and can set the municipal waste water treatment system out of balance. To avoid these impacts the SKOTAN tannery has installed a chemical treatment of the sewage before the water is lead to the municipal sewage system. Places in the production with high risk of spilling have furthermore been equipped with tanks or sewage systems that can receive spills or leaks. SKOTAN has modern-ized the production equipment to reduce the amount of waste. All generated waste is reused, except from the sewage sludge and hair from unhairing process which are transported to the tannery’s own waste depot.

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