What happened this week: The holiday season has now finally started for most. While, in the previous weeks, there was still a lot of standard activity like shipping and administration taking place, things slowed down significantly last week. Offices are shut down or running with very limited staff and most drums had their final turns. Selected and isolated operations are still running and will continue to do so in the coming weeks, but this is not filling the working day in the offices.

In the warehouses the situation is a bit different and even worse than in the previous years. The slaughter is pretty much the same as always and with fewer hides shipped fresh, more chilled hides have to be salted, packed and stored. Pending sales to Asia cannot be shipped with the normal simplicity due to reduced shipping capacity and this means that a normal weekly flow of hides cannot be guaranteed every week.

The holiday season is now dominating everything and this means that the rising infection rates around the globe are moving into the background. From what we can see, it looks as though easing travel restrictions has pushed the rates higher again. Slowly the consequences of the lockdown are beginning to reflect in the data statistics. Considering that a lot has been buffered by government action one has to be a bit frightened for the rest of the year if the pandemic is handled in the same way as it has been so far.

As concerning as it is, it is pretty obvious that the global economy, companies and individuals cannot handle an extended period of inactivity. A number of countries claim that they have vaccine available pretty soon. This would be appreciated, but scientifically it is unlikely to be widely available and safe at the same time. This leaves the option to trying to organise life to suit our new circumstances: taking maximum personal care and  precautions in our working conditions to protect everyone in the best way possible.

In the meantime, we have to assume that business will return to more normality beginning in September. How far this takes us we will know by the end of the year.

There are a few obstacles on the road. The presidential election in the US and possibly other issues in politics may have direct influences on the economy. We can see this already with the free fall of the US dollar, which is dropping like a stone.
Business and sales this week were once again difficult. In particular the high volatility in the currency markets is making negotiations very difficult. After a number of weeks in which clients in China have focused only on price and looked for cheap bargains, the interest this week has swung back to quality. All bids this week were for the top end of the quality range for upholstery leathers. The good news is that tanners are still showing interest; the bad news is that the currency fluctuations kills any return in euros.

In Europe we have seen no serious interest, only sporadic sales to the few operators still moving forward. There is little hope that, in our region, we will see an increase in activity and courage soon with the holidays and high levels of uncertainty all over.

The kill: The kill remains at very stable levels when we consider that we are now in the peak holiday season. In the next two weeks the northern parts of the country will return to work and we should slowly begin to raise slaughter numbers again. The weights of all categories remain well above the standard levels of the season.

What we expect: We think that politics, the covid-19 infection numbers and the financial markets will dominate trade in the coming weeks. Generally, we had become a bit more positive after the complete slump of earlier in the year, but with the latest developments one has to become a bit more cautious again. There is still a bit of time until final decisions have to be taken and we think people will take the time available.

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