Day Three - Thursday 27th of June 2019

The Freiberg Leather Days participants joined in on Thursday morning. Now at full strength nearly 460 scientist and technicians from the leather and tanning industry went into the lecture programme, which was run in parallel sessions during morning. With the main hall focussing on engineering and leather making machinery where a number of topics were presented around automation, fault detection, splitting and shaving, and in-line colour measurement, looking at the more practical aspects of machinery and the latest advances in Industry 4.0-led technology and automation.

The other session took place in an adjacent seminar room and continued to look at the scientific aspects of leather and collagen research. Focus of the presentation have been new methods of characterisation, interpretation of structure-property relations and new analysis methods and assessment of results.

After lunch, the two groups joined together in a common session before the end of lecture programme of day three. Altogether 14 oral presentation including 1 key note, 10 presentations within the engineering session and 10 speed presentations have been delivered during the lecture programme that was followed by the IULTCS delegates meeting and VGCT general meeting.

Traditionally scheduled on the eve of the last congress day, the common dinner was set for Thursday The common dinner night usually is the highlight of the congress´ side programme and was set at the Congress Centre´s Great Hall. It provided a special ambience for a classy dinner night with international cooking, life music entertainment and time to socialise with friends, experts and professionals from around the globe: A night of celebrating. Surprise of the night were two magicians with their close-up magic show at the dinner tables amazing the audience with quick fingers and inscrutable tricks.

In the frame of the dinner night, the host society, VGCT, used the opportunity to honour this year´s Annual Awardee, Dr Volker Schröder of TEGEWA, and the Promotional Awardee and best apprentice in 2019, Felix Wengenroth of Lanxess. This was followed by an Appreciation Ceremony that was to appreciate all business partners and donators of the 2019 IULTCS Congress for their great support and encouragement. A representative of each enterprise was asked on stage to receive a Trophy of Appreciation and a Certificate.