Mulberry launches low-carbon leather collection in link with Muirhead

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Nov 22, 2021

As sustainability becomes even more important for luxury companies and their customers, Mulberry on Monday unveiled a bag collection made from the world’s lowest-carbon leather. 

The limited-edition bags were produced in partnership with Muirhead (one of Europe’s oldest tanneries and a member of the Scottish Leather Group) and include the Soft Small Amberley Satchel that has been "updated here with a holistic approach to sustainability”.

The launch ties in with the Made to Last Manifesto that Mulberry launched earlier this year with the collection being “created in the UK with a pioneering hyper-local, hyper-transparent ‘farm to finished product’ supply chain model, marking a bold commitment to transparency and traceability”.

What that means in practice is that all the raw hides were sourced within Britain and Ireland, as well as being tanned, treated and finished by Muirhead at its leather production site outside of Glasgow and constructed in Mulberry’s carbon-neutral Somerset factories.

The company said Muirhead was crucial to the process as it produces the world's lowest-carbon-intensity leather at 1.1kg of CO2 per hide, “made possible by building close relationships with local farmers, utilising their pioneering thermal energy plant, which generates heat from waste, and by maximising water usage by filtering and recycling 40% of the wastewater back into leather production”.

It also said the new partnership “represents the future of Mulberry, laying out an ambitious commitment to transform the business to a regenerative and circular model, encompassing the entire supply chain, from field to wardrobe and establishing a blueprint which can be replicated with a network of trusted partners, underpinning their ambition to reaching Net Zero carbon emissions by 2035”.