Visit to Haas Tanneries

Haas Tanneries are specialists in calf tanning. The skins that come out of their workshops are of an exceptional quality, recognized by the greatest luxury houses.

At Phi 1.618 we had the chance to discover this high place of tanning where more than 90% of our leathers come from. Sébastien Croidieu guided us through the different steps to obtain this magnificent leather: the river work, the tanning, the currying and the finishing or embellishment.

Beyond the know-how, it is also the level of transparency of information that we appreciated: the origin of the skins, the tanning products, the respect of the environment. We are proud to work with such an extraordinary French supplier, which has been around since 1842. We detail everything below!

The hides come from local French producers. They come from the meat industry and by transforming them into leather, the tanners optimize the use of the animal.

The first step: The river workshop

To be well preserved, the skins arrive salted at the tannery. The water will remove this salt. The water (which is no longer from the river) is constantly reprocessed to avoid any pollution.

Then the skins are passed through a sewing machine to eliminate the hairs and their thickness is mechanically equalized.
They are then visually checked and stored according to their quality and size. They are then dried so that the next step of tanning takes place correctly.

2. The tanning workshop

This is done in a fuller, a sort of huge washing machine, by successive additions of tanning agents such as chromium salts or vegetable extracts.
Chromium plating is a part of the leather tanning process that can have a negative connotation as opposed to mineral tanning.

At Haas Tanneries, the use of chromium III (and never chromium IV, which is highly toxic) is also highly regulated and involves a precise mixing process to achieve the best result, but also a lengthy chromium removal step after chromium plating.
European REACH standards are very strict, but chromium IV is still used in tanneries outside Europe.
At Phi, 90% of our leathers use the mineral tanning process. Learn more about the different tanning processes here in our previous blog post.

3. Wet-Blue sorting

Chrome III has a beautiful emerald color and the skins take on a pale blue color after chroming which explains their name "wet blue".
The skins will now be checked and selected with more precise criteria: size, thickness, aspect, surface.
They are then cut to the right thickness according to the customer's request during the slitting and de-slipping operations.

4. Retanning and dyeing steps

These operations take place again in drums (stainless steel, wood or polypropylene) of different sizes.
This is a second tanning operation applied to the hides in wet-blue. The retanning-feeding operation will give the mechanical characteristics to each article.

This is followed by the dyeing process that gives the skins their basic coloring.
This is the most inspiring part for us! Different color mixtures are made to obtain the desired shade. This is applied with a special machine that guarantees an even layer of color.

5. Wrought iron, a term that covers several stages

It is about the winding (unridging), vacuum drying, palissonnage, fulling and framing. Lots of technical terms to get to the selection and printing of the leather grain on the dried hides. The patterns you see on the hides are not all natural!

6. Finishing is the last stage of production

The skins must be made homogeneous by giving them the characteristics of aspect (more or less satin), of touch (flexible or held, more or less polished) and of resistance requested by the customers.

There are many different grains. At Phi 1.618, we use Epsom, liégé or caviar grain for our bags. For our belts, we use smooth leather.

7. Quality control is performed in the laboratory

Once the hides have been fully processed, they must be tested for quality and it is necessary to ensure that they retain all their color properties. Haas tanneries have their own laboratories for abrasion, bending and strength testing, but use outside laboratories for chemical testing.

Luxury leather goods companies tan more hides than they need for their leather goods production to ensure exceptional quality. The skins that are not retained constitute the "dormant" stocks. It is from these stocks that our designer Juliette Angeletti selects each hide one by one. This is how the leather of our creations is tanned and then chosen.

To discover the steps and the process of making a bag with this leather in our workshop, click here!