São Paulo – In 2016 Patrícia Olve (pictured) came up with a formula to manufacture the pirarucu fish leather and became the first woman to work with the product in Brazil. She started her tannery in Ji-Paraná, Rondônia, began selling the leather in various models to other states, won clients and noticed there was an export potential as well.
She began with Milan, Italy, one of Europe’s fashion capitals, and has since sold to France, the United States, Qatar, and South Africa. She has also a connection with a businessman from the United Arab Emirates, for whom she provided consulting on how to manufacture salmon leather. The product’s distribution center is in Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, from where her creations are shipped to Brazil and elsewhere.
Her own brand Olve Leather was launched in 2018, and Olve is the one who designs all her products like clothes, shoes, bags and accessories, all done by hand from pirarucu leather. The businesswoman is now nationally and internationally known as the pirarucu leather queen. “Pirarucu’s is the most valued leather in Brazil and elsewhere,” Olve told ANBA during the Rondônia Rural Internacional in Ji-Paraná.
Pirarucu is one of the world’s largest scaled freshwater fish in the world and is found across the Amazon region. It can reach over 200 kg and 3 meters.
The firm only buys pirarucu skin whose production complies with the regulations of environmental regulator Ibama and comes from sustainable fishery.
In North Brazil you can find pirarucu farming in tanks for selling the fish’s meat. “But we can’t use the farmed fish’s skin as the fishes are too small,” Olve explained.
“All my life, my essence, is pirarucu,” said the businesswoman, who has a tattoo of a pirarucu on her forearm. She said she met the fish when she was studying Agricultural Engineering and fell in love. Then she took a post-graduate course on Fish Farming, when she learned all about the cycle of life of the pirarucu. She also holds a master’s degree in environmental sciences with an emphasis in Sustainability in the Amazon, and she’s an expert in Fish Leather Tanning.
The founder and creative director of the Olve Leather brand is also the founder of the Instituto Masú, a non-profit organization that carries out actions for increasing the quality of life of over 1,000 riverside families, the so-called “guardians of the forest.” The institute helps fishers regulate their work in sustainable management as per the guidelines of Ibama.
The journalist traveled at the invitation of Rondônia’s Secretariat for Economic Development (SEDEC).
Read more on Rondônia:
- Rondônia’s Castanhas Ouro Verde sells to Algeria
- Ice cream brand features native ingredients of Rondônia
- Cacaulândia: Chocolate from Rondônia named after city
- Sustainability could connect Rondônia to Arab countries
- Ascenergy sells Brazil’s largest drone for agriculture
- Fish, coffee, cocoa, açaí: Export potential of Rondônia
- Rondônia’s Amazon Robusta coffee more and more sustainable
- Rondônia Rural Show holds event to internationalize state
Translated by Guilherme Miranda
