Primeasia’s Sustainability Journey: 2025 Progress Report and Ambitious 2030 Roadmap

Primeasia Leather, one of the leather industry’s most sustainability-focused companies, has released its 2025 Sustainability Report—and the findings paint a picture of a company that isn’t merely talking about sustainability but systematically embedding it into every aspect of its operations. Alongside the 2025 report, Primeasia has outlined a comprehensive five-year sustainability roadmap through 2030, backed by new Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) commitments.

Science-Based Targets Driving Strategy

At the heart of Primeasia’s sustainability strategy are its verified science-based emissions reduction targets. In December 2025, Primeasia verified its near-term 2035 and long-term 2050 net-zero targets, covering Scope 1, Scope 2, and Scope 3 emissions—including Forest, Land, and Agriculture (FLAG) emissions.

This is significant because Scope 3 emissions (those occurring in a company’s value chain) are typically the most challenging to address in the leather industry. Leather’s Scope 3 footprint includes emissions from livestock rearing, feed production, tannery chemical manufacturing, transportation, and product end-of-life. By committing to address FLAG emissions, Primeasia is tackling the leather industry’s most complex sustainability challenge: the environmental impact of livestock agriculture.

Jonathan Clark, CEO of Primeasia Leather, framed the achievement in compelling terms: “In 2025, we made meaningful strides in our sustainability journey. Most notably, we achieved verification of our science-based emissions reduction targets. This progress is in large part due to our global teams that work tirelessly and passionately to create positive impact for our business. Sustainability is a journey and we enter the next year ready to build on the progress we have made.”

Operational Excellence: Audits and LWG Gold Medal

Primeasia’s operational sustainability performance in 2025 was exemplary. The company completed 38 audits across its operations and maintained Leather Working Group (LWG) Gold Medal ratings for its tanneries—the highest level of LWG certification.

Maintaining LWG Gold Medal certification requires rigorous ongoing compliance with environmental, social, and governance standards. It’s not a one-time achievement but a continuous performance requirement. Primeasia’s ability to maintain this rating while completing 38 audits demonstrates robust management systems and a genuine organizational commitment to standards compliance.

To further strengthen its approach, Primeasia is introducing an Operating Unit (OU) scorecard system. This shifts the company from a reactive compliance model to a more proactive, performance-driven approach. By embedding sustainability KPIs into operating unit scorecards, sustainability performance becomes everyone’s responsibility—not just a specialized function.

Traceability: The 17% Milestone and 100% Target

Traceability remains one of the leather industry’s most closely watched sustainability metrics. Brands and consumers increasingly want to know not just where leather was tanned, but where the animal was raised, what it was fed, and under what conditions it lived.

Primeasia achieved 17% traceability to birth farm or group of farms in 2025—a meaningful increase from previous years and an important step toward the company’s 100% traceability target by 2030. Achieving full traceability in the leather supply chain is extraordinarily complex, requiring coordination across ranchers, traders, slaughterhouses, and tanneries. Primeasia’s progress suggests the company is investing in the systems and partnerships needed to make traceability at scale achievable.

The company is also collaborating with industry partners to standardize traceability data—a critical but often overlooked aspect of supply chain transparency. Without standardized data formats and protocols, traceability information can’t flow efficiently across the supply chain.

Chemical Management and Water Stewardship

Primeasia strengthened its chemical management and water stewardship efforts substantially in 2025. The company reported that 85% of sourced chemicals were ZDHC (Zero Discharge of Hazardous Chemicals) Level 3 certified, up from 75% in 2024. ZDHC Level 3 certification represents the highest level of chemical management assurance in the textile and leather industries.

On water, Primeasia achieved 60% recycled water usage in 2025, making meaningful progress toward its goal of using 100% recycled water by 2040. Water recycling in tanneries requires substantial infrastructure investment and technical capability—Primeasia’s 60% achievement indicates serious commitment and capability in this area.

Renewable Energy and Climate Strategy

To support its climate strategy, Primeasia installed 5.766 MWp of rooftop solar capacity in Vietnam during 2025. This investment helped renewable energy account for 46% of total energy use across the company’s facilities. The 2030 goal: 100% renewable energy by 2040.

The solar installation represents more than just emissions reduction—it demonstrates that leather manufacturing can be powered by clean energy. As electricity grids worldwide gradually decarbonize and renewable energy costs continue declining, Primeasia’s early investment in solar capacity positions the company advantageously for the future.

Primeasia also diverted 79% of its waste from landfills during 2025 and is targeting zero waste to landfill by 2040. Waste diversion in tanneries is particularly challenging because leather manufacturing generates diverse waste streams—organic waste, sludge, trimmings, packaging, and more. The 79% diversion rate suggests sophisticated waste management systems and likely partnerships with recycling and recovery service providers.

Social Sustainability: Living Wages and Community

Primeasia’s sustainability approach extends beyond environmental metrics to encompass social dimensions. The company is developing systems to track and analyze production worker data against global living wage benchmarks—a critical issue in the leather industry, where wage levels in some manufacturing regions have drawn scrutiny.

In 2025, Primeasia completed more than 3,400 hours of community service. The company is developing a worker wellbeing strategy with a goal of reaching 25,000 people by 2040—an ambitious target that, if achieved, would make Primeasia one of the leather industry’s leading contributors to community development.

Camille Mori, Chief Sustainability Officer at Primeasia Leather, captured the company’s philosophy succinctly: “Sustainability is not a standalone program at Primeasia, it is embedded in our core values and in the way we operate, innovate and serve our customers. The momentum we built in 2025 positions us to move faster, collaborate more deeply and deliver meaningful results in the years ahead.”

Conclusion

Primeasia’s 2025 Sustainability Report and 2030 roadmap represent a comprehensive, science-based, and genuinely ambitious approach to corporate sustainability. The company isn’t merely making incremental improvements—it’s systematically transforming its operations across environmental, social, and governance dimensions.

Whether Primeasia achieves its 2030 and 2040 targets remains to be seen. But the 2025 report makes one thing clear: this is a company that takes sustainability seriously, measures rigorously, reports transparently, and continuously raises its own ambitions. In an industry where sustainability claims sometimes outpace performance, Primeasia appears to be building a genuine track record of delivery.

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Source: Leather News (https://leathernews.org/primeasia-sustainability-report-2025/)