Leahter has always been a special product in the world.What makes it special is the original structure of its raw material,that is,the aninal skin ,and the fact that this originality is maintained until the last point in the production and consumption chain.Leather with such specialty coprises one of the large industrial and foreign items;it is also the raw material of tens of the most basic goods we use daily.In the leather and leather products sector,everything starts with the raw skin and its processing.Processing of the skin is the subject of the leather-processing of subsector.The most basic definition of the subsector is:Treatment of the raw skin with the help of various physical and chemical processes and machinery.The raw skins are obtained as a byproduct of the meat industry and come from cattle or small cattle. This subsector today is one of the strongest divisions of the Turkish leather industry.The final product of this subsector is leather to be used in garments,saddlery and footwear.Production processes and systems naturally show variation according to the product groups.There are common characteristics affecting the whole sector.An important characteristic of the raw skin and leather-processing subsector is that there is a significant gap supply and demand of raw material because of a lack of domestic production;this gap ia filled by imports of raw and semi-processed leather to a large extent.Another characteristic is that 70-80%of production in the leather sector in the world is from cattle,almost without exception,and 20-30%from small cattle,whereas in Turkey,the situation is completely the reverse.70-80%of leather production in Turkey comes from small cattle.The sector has a processing capacity of 400,000 tons vear.There are over 1200 tanneries today with different inputs,production processes,capacities and products. The reason why there are so many tanneries is the explosion of exports in the beginning of the 1990s.Russia transformed into a free market economy after the disbanding of the Soviet Union. The subsequent explosion tn demand for leather and leather products in Russia and neighboring countries led to an incredible mobilization of investment and production in Turkey,the number one supplier for such products.Nuri Yerlikaya,Member of the Board of iDMiB and Chairman of the Board of Renk Deri,emphasizes that the increase in production in the period was definitely not artificial.He continues, “Demand reached such a point that we could not produce enough merchandise.While we tripled and quadrupled the capacities of existing tanneries,we also opened many new ones.”