According to leatherbiz.com,

The European Confederation of the Leather Industry (COTANCE) committee meeting was held in Budapest in October 24th. The Federation secretary general said at the meeting that the European leather industry is constantly creating wealth and developing bright prospects.

Mr. Gustavo Gonzalez-Quijano, the secretary general, said that although many European leather companies were small in scale, they had a large number of 2600.

There are 1567 enterprises in its Member States, employing over 28000 employees in leather manufacturing.

He also said that its member states only had annual sales of more than 7 billion euros in leather making, with a trade surplus of 1 billion 500 million euros per year.

If we add other industries in the epithelia industry chain, sales will be considerable.

Moreover, this data does not include non member countries, including Austria, Poland, Czech, Slovakia, Hungary and Greece. They are also important suppliers of leather goods in the European Union.

Jean Claude Ricomard, chairman of Scottish Leather Group Jonathan Muirhead and vice chairman of the French red leather company (Les Tanneries Roux), attended the meeting.