Mennonite Weekly Review

ASUNCION, Paraguay — A new leather tannery is poised to boost the profile of Paraguayan Mennonites in the beef industry.

Ferdinand Kehler manages a Mennonite-owned tannery that processes 1,500 hides a day. — Photo by Wally Kroeker/MEDA

The new state-of-the-art tannery opened this summer on the outskirts of Asuncion, the country’s capital. It is owned by three large Mennonite colonies — Menno, Neuland and Fernheim — who are huge players in Paraguay’s beef industry.

Each colony has its own slaughterhouse, handling a combined total of 300,000 cattle a year, but send all hides to the new joint tannery, called CENCOPROD. The plant and the 20 acres of land it occupies cost $7 million and employs 65 people.

CENCOPROD processes 1,500 hides a day but has capacity for 2,000, said its manager, Ferdinand Kehler.

After being trimmed, treated and pressed, the hides emerge in a form that can be exported to places such as Italy and elsewhere to be finished into products like high-end shoes and purses. Discards from the lower part of the hide are sent off to be made into dog “chew treats” and gelatin.

“We use everything but the hair,” Kehler said.

The Mennonite colonies play a big role in the country’s growing beef industry, accounting for 4 million to 5 million head of cattle, roughly 40 percent of Paraguay’s total. Premium Chaco beef, which is raised on grass and not in feedlots, is popular worldwide, with regular exports going to Chile, Russia, the European Union and Saudi Arabia.

The tannery has its roots in the early history of Mennonite Economic Development Associates. MEDA’s first venture in the 1950s was a cattle breeding and dairy operation in Fernheim Colony, followed soon after by a small tannery called Sinfin, which operated until the late 1990s.

Its third project was the Fortuna factory in Filadelfia, which made shoes, saddles and cowboy chaps from the leather produced by the tannery. These and other projects not only helped meet immediate economic needs but also helped nourish an entrepreneurial climate to facilitate other opportunities.

Kehler has a personal connection with those early MEDA projects. He is the grandson of Jacob Kehler, MEDA’s partner in the original Sinfin tannery, as well as the nephew of the Fortuna partner, the late Hans Dyck. Kehler’s father was for many years an employee of Fortuna.

As a young man Ferdinand Kehler was encouraged to work in the shoe factory, but chose instead to move to Asuncion for other employment. He says that when he took the job managing CENCOPROD this year his father was quick to phone him and chortle, “Now you’re back in the leather business.”