By the bootstraps

"We are using biological approaches to tackle our wastewater, which is much better than the traditional electrolyzing approach most factories (in the country) still use," he says. "To ease their worries, we explained everything carefully to our workers and invited the Environmental Protection Authority to investigate and test our factory. It turned out that our wastewater is now setting the standard for wastewater produced by tanneries."

The factory uses bio-technology to process the wastewater. The processed water is then recycled for reuse in the factory.

Yakob Taddese, administration manager of China-Africa Overseas Leather Products, says the factory will continue to innovate with such measures.

"There is a river across town and the local government and people feared the wastewater would pollute it and kill cattle," he says.

"It's natural that they didn't understand things that they had never experienced in their lives."

He says the government, which is aiming to improve the leather industry, one of the country's pillar industries, has encouraged the subsidiary's biological approach to treating wastewater. The company recently decided to invest another $3 million on the development of its wastewater treatment system.

Apart from its innovation with wastewater technology, the company sees its willingness to train people as crucial to its future.

"There is a Leather Technology Development Institute not far from us and we forged a partnership with them to regularly receive interns and graduates from it," he says. "We also train local staff with no experience."

Workers at the factory, He says, will be trained in the wastewater treatment procedures.

When the factory first opened, many of its workers had limited knowledge of the company's leather procedures or of safe environmental practices, which He says hampered productivity at that time.

"We expected to process 15,000 pieces of leather a day. But the production capability after one year still remained 5,000 to 6,000 pieces, and we hope to reach 12,000 pieces per day later this year."

But He says it was enough to make a difference in the industry.

"Our sales affect more than 200,000 families who raise goats, and the price of raw materials from them nearly tripled from 30 ETB ($1.61) per piece to 90 ETB just in just two years" he says.

"Many local factories could only produce semi-processed skins and had to send their products to our factories for final processing."

Sales revenue last year reached $15 million, He says, Total investment in the factory is 270 million yuan ($45 million). China-Africa Overseas Leather Products produced 2.85 million pieces of finished leather during the year.

"This capacity is really high when we compare it with local tanneries," He says. "China-Africa Overseas Leather Products has increased annual production quantity of finished leather by 15 percent so far. That's more than five local tanneries can produce."

In addition to initial struggles with productivity, another big problem for the company has been a shortage of raw leather skins.

It recently moved to diversify its purchase channels and buy more semi-processed products from local companies.

"Initially we only bought raw materials around Addis Ababa, but now we have to explore the market to the far north, which produces more skins," Taddese says.

Increasing production capacity and bringing in more quality machines are priorities for the business to expand globally.