The HANWAG promise: 100% Made in Europe

HANWAG boots and shoes are made in Europe. What does this mean?

In some countries, like the US, it’s required to label a product to show its country of origin. There is no such requirement in the European Union. Nevertheless, HANWAG states the country that its footwear is made in, such as for example, with the label ‘made in Croatia’.

Like most products, hiking boots are also the sum of their different parts. And in the global economy, these individual parts or pre-manufactured sections often come from other countries. So which country in the manufacturing chain should actually be named as the country of origin?

According to the EU customs code there are two main aspects:

• The country where the “last significant processing or working” took place.
• Here, the value of the product must increase by at least 45% as a result of this “processing or working”. This may apply to both the materials and the work performed on them.

In theory, this means that we could import leather uppers sewn in Asia, fit our soles to them and then label them as ‘Made in Germany’. However, we don’t do this. Our promise is that: HANWAG boots and shoes are 100% made in Europe.

The majority of our materials and parts are from Europe. One of the few exceptions is the yak leather we use, which comes from Mongolia. However, even our yak leather is refined here in Germany and then worked to make hiking boots at our manufacturing sites in Hungary and Croatia.

This is why we can say that HANWAG footwear is 100% ‘Made in Europe’.