D4.2– Guidelines for the Resilient, Sustainable and Circular Redesign of Leather Supply Chains

This report presents an evidence-based framework to support the resilient, sustainable, and circular redesign of Italian leather supply chains within the MICS–RESTART initiative (Spoke 7). Building on a sectoral questionnaire and a fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA), the study maps the heterogeneity of tanneries, footwear and leather-goods firms and identifies the causal configurations through which circularity emerges. Results demonstrate that sustainability in the Italian leather ecosystem is configurational, non-linear and path-dependent: no single trajectory leads to circularity. Instead, five viable transition pathways are identified—Advanced Organisations, Knowledge-Based Companies, Large-Scale Circular Firms, Small Circular Firms and Resource-Constrained Firms—each capable of achieving comparable performance levels through different combinations of innovation capacity, technological maturity, organisational enablers and product-level strategies. A necessary condition across all pathways is the systematic adoption of product-oriented circular actions, confirming the strategic relevance of material quality, durability, reparability and traceability as competitive levers for the sector. These findings are operationalised into five strategic axes for circular supply-chain redesign—Product Stewardship, Technological Investment, Environmental Data Consistency, Competence Building and Resilience-Oriented Practices—which provide differentiated guidance for SMEs and large enterprises across tanning, footwear and leather-goods manufacturing. The report highlights the increasing pressure of ESPR, CSRD and the Digital Product Passport, emphasising the urgency of technological upgrading, digital information transfer and organisational learning. The proposed framework offers a coherent and scalable roadmap to accelerate the transition toward low-impact, traceable and resilient leather supply chains, reinforcing the sector’s competitive position in the context of emerging sustainability requirements.