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This association without aim of profit was founded in the year 1962, when a group of spanish tanners created it with the objective to develop research work in the leather sector. Until that moment this topic was depending upon the individual potential of every company and the technological contribution of chemical and machinery suppliers.
This situation propitiated the project and building of a new technological centre taking up 9.000 sq meters, from which approximately 3.200 built up.
From the structuration of the employer's association in the Spanish Leather Council (C.E.C.), its members become associates to AIICA thus consolidating its existence.
Until the year 1993 the Association was placed in the dependencies of CSIC in Barcelona, under the direction of Prof.Enrique Gratacós, until his retirement. In this year, Dr.José M.Adzet, Director of the leather School of Igualada assumed the relief in the management, moving the site to Igualada..
Between years 1994 and 2000 the institution had an intense consolidation and progress as technological centre for support to leather sector, rising from a three to twenty staff people in this period. Simultaneously, the equipment was considerably increased, to the extent to make insufficient the initial Amelior Building, in Lleida Street of Igualada.
THE NEW CENTER AND SERVICES OFFEREDThe new AIICA facilities are distributed by activity areas:
- Pilot tannery, to develop trials on leather processing in semi industrial scale. Ten trial drums automatically feed by a hot water distribution and four dyeing drum batteries are available, segmented in five "boxes" work units intended to facilitate the confidentiality of the users. Concretely, the available size capacities are two drums of 1,70 x 1,00 meters and eight of 1,00 x 0,60 m. The plant dotation is completed by a freezing chamber for hides and skins and the auxiliary machinery required for the mechanical treatment of the semi-elaborated leather.
- Administration and divulgation, containing a lecture room, library, computer seminar, and meeting rooms, as well as office and archive.
- The laboratory areas, with the chemical laboratory, including the preparative area with appropriate accessories (weighing room, sampling, oven room, etc.), the instrumental laboratories that give place to the different analytical techniques requiring sophisticated equipment and a specific room for its proper work: gas chromatography, atomic absorption, solid residues laboratory, microbiology, waste water and environment. Testing laboratory specialised in leather, prepared to fit the standardised test conditions of machinery to perform the analysis of resistance, fatness and general quality parameters of the finished leather.
