Customers And End Users

Leather is produced for many different applications from several different types of hide. The most usual sources are cattle, sheep, horses, goats, and pigs but exotics like crocodile, snake, and fish are sometimes used. The hides from all these animals have their own characteristics and can vary considerably in price.

Borge Garveri AS is most widely known for its heavy leathers. One of the reasons for this is the suitability of Scandinavian cattle hides for such products. These hides are intrinsically very heavy and have a grain that is generally free of scratches and insect bites. This makes them ideal for the full grain products that are our trademark. Hides that have many defects are either buffed to remove the grain and then finished with a pigment or embossed with a grain pattern to mask the defects. This embossing is typically done at high temperature and pressure. A good example of this sort of leather is that used in the Norwegian Army combat boots. Whilst the majority of the production is around 2.0 mm, some of the leather for leather goods is made up to 3.5 mm thick.

Other end uses include shoes, handbags, knife sheaths, wallets, key fobs, and writing pads. Our customers are nearly as diverse as our leathers and include shoemakers and luxury fashion brands as well as “one off” orders for speciality products. An example of this was leather Borge supplied for some custom-made travel bags ordered by an African Royal Household. Such is the diversity and nature of our customers that many of the world’s rich and famous people have somewhere in their possession a product made from leather tanned in Osterøy.

Borge Garveri AS is Norway’s biggest tannery and in an increasingly competitive international market continues to
thrive by responding quickly to customers’ demands by being flexible and creative in providing the right product at the right
time.