Innovative method for traceability of hides throughout the leather manufacturing process

In this work, a novel technological solution for the traceability of hides throughout the leather manufacturing process is addressed. The proposed solution relies on marking the raw hide with a permanent sub-surface tattoo, made with specific substances used as identification markers. In practical applications, the markers can be embedded so as to form a pre-established pattern, thus creating a unique identification code. To experimentally demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed solution, in this work, different types of markers were injected in a raw hide (i.e., prior to its tanning). After the tanning process, the persistence of the markers and of their pattern was verified by comparatively inspecting the hide with two different sensing technologies: microwave reflectometry and X-ray imaging. The obtained results demonstrated that the proposed traceability system is a promising solution to circumvent the age-old problem related to counterfeiting and fraudulent substitutions of raw materials in the leather manufacturing industry.