It was at the beginning of the 19th century that a French dyer from Lyon discovered the presence of a high proportion of tannin in Chestnut wood and extracted it. This property was subsequently used for the dyeing of silk before being extended to the tanning of leather and had a great part in the technical development of the tanning industry and to the introduction of rapid tanning.
In France, in the second half of 19th century and before the first world war, a large number of small factories of a semi-artisan character dispersed in the regions populated by Chestnut trees, began working, often only during a part of the year, with agricultural manual labour, producing the extract in a primitive manner.
Manufacturing techniques constantly improved thanks to the development of more and more intricate and important equipment. Furthermore improvement has come about thanks to sales development of solid and spray dried powder extracts, at the expense of liquid extracts. Eventually, better exploitation of the residual chips of wood, brought to a remarkable development of this industry, till having a dozen of producers of tanning extracts and wood by-products.
The final result of this constant growth and the merge between small size factories, is the constitution of a larger single plant which produce about 10.000 tons of Chestnut extract yearly, and various by-products using state of the art equipment.
The original company has been found in 1904, in Labruguière, France and until the second world war the production was only dedicated to the manufacturing of Chestnut extract. In the year 1950, fibreboard plant and then particleboard plants were integrated in order to recycle the exhausted chips.
Chestnut wood extract was the first tannin extract to be made in the world.
|ASTRINGENT||CHESTNUT N||Natural Chestnut for sole and waterproof leather|
|CHESTNUT NES||Bleached Chestnut for drum sole leather production|
|SWEETENED||CHESTNUT SH||Special sweetened extract for soft vegetable tanned leather and for retanning wet blue|
|CHESTNUT ASD||Neutralised Chestnut for rapid vegetable leather production|
|CHESTNUT A||Neutralised Chestnut for sole leather|