Assomac and ACCAL have signed a three-year memorandum of understanding, and it is a more revealing document than a trade association press release usually has any right to be. The agreement, signed on 16 September 2026 at SIMAC Tanning Tech in Milan, links Italy’s leather technology association with the Latin American Association of Footwear and Related Chambers \u2014 Asociaci\u00f3n de C\u00e1maras de Calzado de Latinoam\u00e9rica \u2014 across twelve countries, including the Mercosur region.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The stated purpose is cooperation between Italian technology companies and Latin American footwear manufacturers. The real signal is what it says about where the machinery industry believes the next round of factory capacity will be installed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Latin America produces around 1.5 billion pairs of shoes a year across more than 30,000 factories. Those are not marginal figures. That is a manufacturing base roughly comparable to India’s and larger than any single European producer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Assomac’s logic is that this sector’s development is creating demand for advanced technologies and machinery. That is the standard formulation, and it is accurate as far as it goes. But the more interesting question is why a three-year institutional agreement is needed at all, when machinery has always been sold across the Atlantic without one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The answer is that capital equipment purchases at scale require more than a sales channel. They require financing structures, service networks, technician training, spare-parts logistics and \u2014 critically \u2014 a relationship with the industry bodies that influence which factories modernise first. A three-year MoU is the scaffolding around all of that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As part of the initiative, 65 Latin American delegates took part in activities in Italy through the Italian Trade Agency, meeting companies and industry representatives. Mexico is the next focus, through ANPIC in October, with further activities planned in Colombia and Argentina.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Read that itinerary as a map of where Italian machinery expects capacity growth: Mexico first, then Colombia, then Argentina. Brazil is absent \u2014 but Brazil’s machinery ecosystem is already the most developed in the region. The opportunity Assomac is pursuing is the second tier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Machinery orders are the leading indicator of leather demand. No factory buys a through-feed sammying machine, a staking machine or an automatic spray line because it is optimistic about next quarter. It buys because it has committed to a capacity plan with a customer, a lender and a building lease behind it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A three-year technology partnership across twelve countries therefore tells you something specific: Italian equipment makers expect Latin American footwear and leather production to expand, and to expand in the direction of higher specification. The agreement explicitly aims to help Italian companies better understand Latin American manufacturers’ requirements while creating B2B partnerships and investment. That language is about upgrading capability, not adding low-cost capacity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For chemical suppliers, component makers and tanners, the sequence matters. Where machinery goes, process specification follows. A factory that installs Italian tanning or finishing equipment typically adopts the chemical regimes, quality protocols and compliance standards bundled with it. That creates a durable commercial corridor running from Italian suppliers into Latin American factories \u2014 and it will crowd out suppliers who cannot support that specification.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There is a skeptical reading, and it deserves airing. Latin America’s footwear industry has been promised technological upgrading before. Argentina’s tanning sector has spent a decade cycling through currency crises, export restrictions and input shortages. Mexico’s manufacturing base is deeply integrated with the United States, and therefore exposed to every shift in US trade policy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
An MoU does not fix a macroeconomy, and twelve countries in one agreement is a warning sign as much as a strength: broad enough to include markets that will not convert, possibly thin in depth per market.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yet the direction of travel is hard to dispute. European manufacturing costs \u2014 energy above all \u2014 have made domestic capacity expansion in tanning and footwear economically unattractive. Italian machinery makers know their home market is not going to grow. If they want to sell machines in 2030, they need customers in places where building a factory still makes sense. Latin America, with 30,000 factories, tariff barriers that reward local production, and proximity to the US market, is one of the few such places.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The signing took place at SIMAC Tanning Tech in Milan. That is not incidental. Trade fairs are where technology transfer is negotiated, and this year’s edition drew attendance up substantially. The fair is doing its job: putting equipment makers in the same hall as the factories that will buy from them for the next decade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Three concrete signals will tell you whether this agreement produces anything more than photographs and a signed page.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
First, whether ANPIC in Mexico converts into installed equipment. A machinery order is a fact; a delegation is an intention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Second, whether the Italian Trade Agency funding continues beyond the current cycle. Institutional trade support is the quiet subsidy that makes these partnerships viable for small and mid-sized machinery builders who cannot fund a Latin American service network alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Third, whether Latin American tanneries \u2014 not just footwear factories \u2014 appear in the follow-up programmes. If the cooperation stays at the cutting-and-assembly level, the leather will keep arriving semi-processed from elsewhere, and the value addition will be shallow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The machinery industry has placed its bet. Twelve countries, three years, and a continent that still builds things. The leather trade upstream of those machines should be reading the same document and deciding whether it wants a seat on the same plane.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Source: Leather News (leathernews.org), reporting the Assomac\u2013ACCAL memorandum signed at SIMAC Tanning Tech<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Assomac and ACCAL signed a three-year agreement covering 12 Latin American countries, linking Italian leather machinery with 30,000-plus footwear factories.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3171,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_georankopt_ai_score":63,"_georankopt_ai_analysis":null,"_georankopt_ai_recommendations":null,"_georankopt_focus_keyword":"","_georankopt_ai_last_analysis":"2026-10-31 09:23:25","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[1525,1889,681,86,1888,1887,1571,1187],"class_list":["post-3172","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-industry-news","tag-accal","tag-anpic","tag-assomac","tag-footwear-manufacturing","tag-italian-technology","tag-latin-america-footwear","tag-leather-machinery","tag-simac-tanning-tech"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.galan.ltd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3172","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.galan.ltd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.galan.ltd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.galan.ltd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.galan.ltd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3172"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.galan.ltd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3172\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.galan.ltd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3171"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.galan.ltd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.galan.ltd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.galan.ltd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}