Categories: Lifestyle

Hermès Under Fire For Its Plans To Build Australia’s Biggest Crocodile Factory Farm For Its Luxury Handbags

50,000 crocodiles will be farmed for skin and meat products.

The luxury fashion house purchased The Sweet Life, a former banana and melon farm at Lambells Lagoon in Darwin, Australia.
The farm can hold to around 50,000 crocodiles that would be the source for skin and meat products.
Animal activists called it “revolting” and “unnecessary”.

Luxury fashion house Hermès is getting major flak for its purchase of The Sweet Life, a former banana and melon farm at Lambells Lagoon in Darwin, Australia.

The sale was done in partnership with Mick Burns, director of PRI Farming and also known as Crocodile King.

The property was bought to be transformed into the country’s biggest crocodile farm, which was said to hold around 50,000 crocodiles that would be the source for skin and meat products.

Hermès is known for its luxury crocodile skin leather bags.

Animal activists took to Twitter to express their outrage about the sale. They called it “revolting” and “unnecessary”, especially since other luxury labels are opting not to use leather and fur recently.

Crocofile farming consultant Geoff McClure said that there is “probably a very good reason to build a new farm” and that it will be a major expansion for the crocodile industry.

He added that if Hermès and Louis Vuitton buy up these properties, it ensures continous supply for their materials.

“They are harvesting eggs in the NT, raising those crocodiles on their own farms, to their own standard — and that standard has to be incredibly high, with no damage to the skin at all — and then tanning that skin to a very high-quality standard to produce a product for high-quality fashion,” he explained.

The Birkin crocodile handbag, which is Hermès’ highly-coveted product, can sell for more than £50,000. Louis Vuitton’s exotic handbags can go as high as £30,000.

Luxury houses prefer Australian saltwater crocodiles, according to McClure.

This is because these breed of crocodiles have “more scales per unit of area on the belly”.