Research and development


BIMEO has widespread experience in the field of R+D, mainly in the leather industry, but in the shoe industry too. It is not easy for us to utilize this knowledge on a national level, due to the present local conditions, but fortunatly – with the approching EU enlargement – we had the opportunity to participate in several international projects.

Our Company has been a member of EURIS - European Association of Research Institutes for the Shoe-industry since 2002. We can find such renowned Institutes among the founders of this Association, as SATRA from Great-Britain, the spanish INESCOP, the french CTC or the german PFI. Our EURIS membership helps us to stay up-to-date on the topics of European research strategy and available tenders. Maintaining regular contact to the big European research and development institutes gives us of course significant advantages in other areas as well.

Our more significant projects:

The Phare-project called INTELISHOE has already come to an end; with the cooperation of spanish, italian, slovenian, romanian and hungarian companies/institutes. The aim of the project was to produce the lasts used for the manufacturing of shoes with a modern, computer-aided technology.

Currently – together with BCE (Association for the Leather and Shoe Industry) and the Tannery of Pécs – we are working on the DERMAGENESIS project. In the scope of the 6. Framework Program, the project consortium is conducting serious basic research for the leather industry, with italian leadership, english, norwegian, spanish and hungarian members.Our goal is to resolve two of the big problems of the leather industry:

by producing an alternative raw material for the manufacturing of leather. The process is based on tissue engineering methods used already succesfully for medical purposes. In this way we would like to produce a material that is similar to raw hide, but has a uniform and reliable quality and price. According to our current plans, the technology would substitute the probably most expensive and environmentally most critical steps of leather manufacturing, attached to the cleaning and preparing of   raw hides. The Project has started on the 15. January 2004., and will be running for four years.