NGO says Italian tanneries controlled by the French luxury group are seeking exemptions to EU deforestation law while importing hides linked to Paraguayan forest loss.
Leonie Cater, Marianne Gros
Fabrizio Nuti — president and CEO of Nuti Ivo Group, an Italian tannery acquired three years ago by Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy, and president of Italy’s national tannery industry association — is a prominent voice in the campaign.
“If we cannot get the raw material that we need, we’re out of business — we are out, simply, overnight because we don’t have the information that is required,” Nuti told a recent event at the European Parliament, referring to the supply-chain data he would need to comply with the anti-deforestation rules. He insisted that South American skins only represent a fraction of the sector’s imports.
An investigation by NGO Global Witness, a campaign group that investigates the impact of business on the environment, shows that Nuti Ivo has worked with suppliers that have a high risk of causing deforestation across more than 100,000 hectares in Paraguay — including on land claimed by Indigenous communities. The investigation, shared exclusively with POLITICO, also finds that Nuti is part owner of a Paraguayan tannery shipping those skins to Nuti Ivo, the company of which he is CEO.
Both LVMH — which also owns Christian Dior, Tiffany & Co, and Sephora — and Nuti Ivo have said they do not source skins from South America. They cite a group-wide “commitment to halt any deforestation and conversion of natural ecosystems, within both its operations and supply chains by 2025.”
But trade data from the global trade intelligence platform Export Genius shows one company in the Nuti Ivo Group was still receiving hides from a Paraguayan exporter as recently as January.
In 2025, tanneries belonging to the Nuti Ivo Group imported around 2,710 metric tons of leather from Paraguay, including cow and buffalo hides, worth about $3.8 million (€3.4 million), the data shows.
