Legendary Leathers
Since 1856 and with the experience of 6 generations
Top quality leather, made in Germany and tanned naturally – this is what the Kilger family stands for, now in its sixth generation. For more than 160 years, we have been expressing our love of the material through unique, durable products. Our aim is to produce the world’s best leather – and that automatically means doing many small things just right. We use purely natural and ecological tanning, quality, and value in every centimetre. No matter whether the leather is later used in a saddle or a belt from our own leather manufacture: We still produce our Kilger leather as in the “good old days” – when products had a value and were made to be passed on and not to be exchanged the next year.
Passion for leather
Every day anew, when we enter our tannery, we are delighted by the wonderful scent of our pure naturally tanned leather. This passion for the natural product has been one of the foundations of our company for more than 165 years. Our fascination and love for the material is also reflected in the quality of our products. Because we place particular emphasis on decisive small details, each piece of leather is carefully inspected three to five times during the entire process and sorted for its various uses
Sustainability and environment
We are proud to be able to say: “You can’t turn an animal skin into leather in a more sustainable and environmentally friendly way than at the Kilger leather factory”.
Leather is a completely natural product made from raw hides that would otherwise be waste products from the meat industry. From our point of view, the only sensible and ethically justifiable thing to do is to ensure that the hides do not end up in the waste, but that new, high-quality products are created from them for eternity. This full recycling is in our view the epitome of sustainability.
In order to pursue this goal in a modern way, we decided about 15 years ago to build a completely new tannery. One thing was particularly important to us in this process: we wanted to continue to use the old processes and recipes without sacrificing modern technology and the latest standards. As the issue of sustainability is not only important to us for our products, our entire building was built from wood and runs almost completely self-sufficiently in terms of energy thanks to our own systems that generate regenerative energy. In addition, we have upgraded our machinery with the most modern models in recent years for optimal resource utilisation.
Since its foundation in 1856, every leather produced in our factory has been treated with purely natural, vegetable pit tanning. Nowadays, factories usually use the quick barrel tanning method, which only takes a maximum of three days. In contrast, we work exclusively with pit tanning. The leathers are not lying in barrels but are hung up in pits. There they are vegetable tanned in our factory, i.e. treated only by using natural tanning agents such as tree bark, coniferous wood capsules and sometimes wood extracts. This process takes considerably more time and takes six to ten weeks – but every minute is worth it for the highest quality end product.
Vegetable tanning is a niche in the tanning industry; in connection with pit tanning, we are, you could say, in a niche of this niche. Less than a handful of companies in Germany still use this method today – and we are proud to be the largest leather factory among them.
Get in contact with us
Address
Prof.-Hermann Staudinger-Str. 8
D-94234 Viechtach
