German Perspective - 5.9.17
05/09/2017
Fewer exhibitors, empty spaces and wider aisles, and fewer visitors - or at least spending less time at the fair - left international hides sellers disappointed.
The Chinese sections, synthetics and other materials as well as chemicals and machinery were better attended and these companies had a better opinion of the exhibition.
Raw and semi-finished material suppliers mainly left disappointed. Few were happy with sales. In all the years we have attended the international trade shows, we cannot remember the general sentiment from all supply origins being almost the same.
This time we were well prepared for a difficult show for the European suppliers, but with the attractive price levels from other countries we would have expected some happy faces from other regions.
The problem we are all facing in the leather business is that the bread-and-butter business is suffering tremendously at the hands of alternative materials, which are gaining more and more market share.
There are also few indications that the shoe industry will return to leather next season. On a global scale, there is nothing wrong with shoe sales and production, but the use of leather continues to be in retreat.
In the meantime, the trade in general is scared by the side effects of a market in descent. Usually hide suppliers tend to talk the market up, but this time we found players concerned about what could happen to the old contracts if the market is not going to settle or improve soon.
We have only four weeks until the next big industry events and everybody is hoping for some improvement. They do not wish to repeat the same conversations on a different continent.
As far as sales are concerned, we would not call the week brilliant but after the total stalemate in the last weeks of July and August there was the usual uptick. This was only to the regular buyers, but it doesn't matter who takes the hides.
In Europe the standard males found their homes and we also had some intertest from Asia for heavy cows and surprisingly for low grades too. We would call prices steady on males, while for the sales in Asia moderate price concessions had to be made to warrant the regular buyers.
The kill: The kill is slowly improving, but we are still missing rising hide weights. The seasonal increase should continue.
What we expect: The market has to digest the show and this means that after four months of inadequate abattoir prices the next step has to be to bring them in line with market realities.
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