Royal Smit & Zoon mourns the loss of Martin Heise

Martin Heise

With great sadness, we announce the loss of Martin Heise. Martin passed away on December 9th after a long period of illness.

Martin Heise spent his entire career in the leather industry and was a popular and well-known person in the industry. At Royal Smit & Zoon Martin was the Head of Product Management for Wet End wet-end leather chemicals since 2019. Martin joined Smit & Zoon after more than 20 years at Trumpler.

Before that Martin spent his career at TFL, Naturin and two tanneries being Bayern-Leder-GmbH (BLG) and, before that, Südleder. Martin completed the leather technician course at Reutlingen in 1986.

Martin was a very active expert in the leather industry and at the forefront to make leather production more sustainable. Martin was active in several industry groups. Martin was also a recent president of the German Leather Technicians and Chemists Association (VGCT). He was elected as president of VGCT in 2016 until the completion of the successful 2019 IULTCS Congress in Dresden.

We will miss Martin as person a respected colleague, a very warm and an open person. We will remember Martin as a person who was charismatic, energetic, passionate for leather and valued for his expertise.

We extend our condolences to his wife and his family and wish them strength in dealing with this tremendous loss.

On behalf of the Board,

Marc Smit, Hans van Haarst, Dennis Maas