OEKO-TEX® LEATHER STANDARD is a standardised worldwide testing and certification system for leather and leather items from all stages of production. This includes semi-finished products (wet-blue, wet-white, crust) up to finished products. You can certify finished leather, leather fibre materials, ready-made articles, accessories, leather gloves, leather bags, leather covers and more in accordance with LEATHER STANDARD. We do not certify leather materials from exotic animals such as crocodiles, snakes, and armadillos.
For successful certification, different components of an article must meet the required criteria. For testing textile and non-textile components of a leather article (sewing thread, buttons, zip fasteners, linings, inserts, prints, labels etc.), we use the current OEKO-TEX® STANDARD 100. Leather materials must meet the criteria of the current LEATHER STANDARD. This also includes operational quality assurance measures in your company aimed at compliance with the required criteria. If you pass the quality audit carried out by an independent OEKO-TEX® partner institute before or shortly after certification and have signed the General Terms of Use (GTU), nothing stands in the way of your certification.
The criteria catalogue, which is based on international test standards and other recognised test processes, includes around 100 test parameters and is equally binding for all authorised OEKO-TEX® partner institutes. The measures and limit values contained therein are much more stringent than the valid national and international specifications and include:
The more intensively an article comes into contact with the skin, the stricter the human-ecological requirements that it must fulfil. LEATHER STANDARD identifies four product classes:
Product class 1: Articles for babies and children up to 3 years of age
Product class 2: Articles used close to the skin
Product class 3: Articles used away from the skin
Product class 4: Decorative materials
A special regulation within the LEATHER STANDARD only permits the certification of the following skins:
For components of an article that are made of textile or metal fabrics, not of leather, the conditions of the current STANDARD 100 are applied.
Chemicals, auxiliaries and colourants are tested and certified in accordance with ECO PASSPORT by OEKO-TEX®, not the LEATHER STANDARD.