In a new effort to tackle solid waste issues at the Savar Tannery Industrial Estate, a Chinese company has launched a project to convert tannery waste into valuable export products. Bangladesh JW Animal Protein Co Ltd, owned by China’s Wenzhou Yuanfei and Pingyang, has established a gelatine production plant in Savar and plans to expand into making industrial protein powder from leather waste.

The initiative focuses on using discarded materials like wet blue leather scraps and chrome shaving dust to produce gelatine and protein powder. These products will mainly be exported to China and Russia, where there is strong demand, gelatine for use in medicine and capsules, and protein powder for use in leather processing.

This marks the first and only foreign-invested venture in Bangladesh dedicated to converting leather waste into high-value items. To support this, JW Animal Protein signed a memorandum of understanding with Dhaka Tannery Industrial Estate Waste Treatment Plant Company Ltd (DTIEWTPCL) on April 8 to streamline waste collection and processing.