INTRODUCTION
Morgan Hides, in conjunction with Brits Leathers, is a wet blue tanning facility in the Brits Industrial Area where cattle hides are tanned and processed into wet blue leather products for the automotive industry.
The hides, which are skinned from the animals at Morgan Abattoir and also sourced from external suppliers, are sent to our hides factory for processing. The preparatory stages involve the preparation of the hides for tanning, during which many of the unwanted raw hide components are removed.
The Process
The raw hides, also known as “green hides”, are soaked to a softened condition, cooled and put through a fleshing machine. This process is called “Green Fleshing”. Morgan Hides is also supplied with wet salted hides, which are hides that arrive at the tanning facility, already salted. These hides are then returned to its original “green” state by soaking and removal of the salt content.
The hides are then loaded into large, multiple spinning drums known as “Liming drums”, where unhairing of the hides takes place by means of a hair burning process.
The hides are then stacked onto pallets and are now ready for the “Lime Fleshing” process. During this process, all remaining connective tissue is fleshed to ensure quick and effective penetration of the chemicals that the hides are treated with as part of the “Tanning process”.
After the Tanning process, the hides are put in large bins and taken to the Samming machine where “Samming” takes place. Samming involves the removal of any excess water that may still be present in the hides after the Tanning process. Once the hides exit the Samming machine, they are graded, as per the requirements of the client, and split according to the assigned grades.
The hides are then put through a Wet Blue Splitting machine and split into two parts – a “grain split” (top part of the hide) and “drop split” (bottom part of the hide). It is then packaged according to the requirements of the client and stored safely until the date of dispatch.