From Ford Model T to airline seats, the remarkable global success story of Bridge of Weir Leather

Somehow, Muirhead managed to clinch the deal allowing Bridge of Weir Leather to supply the seating upholstery for the Model Ts that eventually rolled off a production line in Manchester in 1911. Over a century later the Muirhead family – now in its eighth generation - still owns the company. Bridge of Weir is part of Scottish Leather Group, a business with 700 employees made up of a tannery called Lang and Muirhead, a maker of cabin seating leather for some of the world’s biggest airlines including British Airways, American Airlines and Air China.

Muirhead also supplied the green leather seating in the House of Commons and the leather on the red box used by chancellors of the exchequer. Over 90 per cent of its leather is shipped to more than 30 countries.

Ford uses Bridge of Weir to this day for the trim in the Navigator, an SUV sold under the US carmaker’s luxury Lincoln brand. The connection to Lincoln, the company’s second-largest customer after Jaguar Land Rover, links back to 1956 when Bridge of Weir supplied the upholstery for the iconic Lincoln Continental Mark II. It did the same for the Citroen DS, undisputably the most elegant car of the postwar 20 th century, and currently supplies luxury and sports car brands such as Bentley, Aston Martin and McLaren.

The group also has two plants in China, one run by Muirhead for hides shipped out from Scotland to be cut and sewed for airline customers, the other a joint venture that supplies Polestar, the EV company controlled by China’s Geely, for which Bridge of Weir is sole supplier of traceable leather for its car seats.

That a Scottish company based in a quiet corner of the Central Belt has carved out such a significant role in the global automotive and aviation industries – while riding out the often-extreme cyclicality of both - is remarkable. It’s also a sign of Scottish manufacturing’s resilience and reach at a time when there can sometimes be a false narrative of parochialism and decline.

Being family-owned has helped, allowing a long-term view. During the pandemic when most businesses were hunkered down, the business invested £18 million in upgrading its tanning and finishing facility, including the installation of a state of the art “ultra-filtration” plant that recycles water used in the tanning process sourced from a small loch on company-owned land.

That came on top of efforts underway since 2003 to turn the group into what it claims is the maker of the lowest carbon leather in the world. This has partly involved switching to renewable power by using wind-generated power from its utility provider and soon switching on solar panels that will provide a quarter of the facility’s power.

The group has also embedded circular economy principles through the use of a thermal energy plant, built in 2010. This uses cow rawhide waste to generate some of the gas used to heat the loch water into steam for use in tanning and dyeing. That waste consists of the material extracted from the rawhides after they have been delivered by the abattoir, leaving two useful commodities: collagen, which is sold to the food industry as an ingredient in sausage skins, gelatine and protein bars, and the key part: usable hide for leather.

“A lot of tanneries over time failed to adapt with environmental regulations and have moved elsewhere – to Eastern Europe, North Africa, China and South America, where environmental regulations weren’t as tight,” explains Ryan Boyce, Bridge of Weir’s business development director. “Being Scottish and stubborn, it was important for us to remain here. It also mattered to be close to the source of supply.”

The group buys its hides from abattoirs in the UK and Ireland, with 55 per cent coming from Scotland.

The group is also addressing the long-standing use in the industry of unsustainable chemical tanning agents which are used to preserve the leather, offering customers leather tanned using one of two bio-based alternatives developed in-house. “We are gradually moving away from metallic tanning agents and switching to plant-based resources, which allows us to improve the bio-content of our products so we can be more circular,” Boyce says.

Perhaps surprisingly leather is making a comeback in the aviation industry, he says, as airlines are realising that fabric seating requires more frequent cleaning and replacement, which can ground aircraft for long periods. “Durability is itself sustainability. You buy cheap, you buy twice,” Boyce says.

Looking ahead, Scottish Leather Group is on the cusp of sparking a potential revolution in cabin seating materials. After years of research, its scientists have developed and patented a natural alternative to the chemical foams widely used in aircraft seats, using the collagen extracted from rawhides. Not only is the material lighter than existing products, but it is intumescent, providing significant fire-proofing. One large airline has already signed up.

In the meantime, Bridge of Weir continues to make a virtue of its location in Scotland’s temperate climate, where the lower prevalence of insects means fewer insect bites and thus less scarring on the hides where the animal has scratched itself. Yet slight scarring can be a good thing, says Boyce, as he points out the faintest marking on a piece of finished dark brown hide destined for a Lincoln Navigator in the US. “It’s a sign of its natural origin, like the knots in a piece of wood” Boyce says. “It’s a beautiful thing.”