This week: The pandemic is once again dominating events. The appearance of the new mutation and its rapid spread and intensity have come as a surprise to many. Uncertainties are developing, and these concern the private and the corporate sphere. In many countries, there are new restrictions on public life. With the accumulation of cases and the subsequent quarantine obligations, more and more businesses are suffering, despite vaccinations. This is hitting sectors that are already suffering from labour shortages even harder. In the leather industry, too, this is making planning difficult. It’s hard to think about plans for the next few months when you don’t even know exactly what will happen in the next few weeks.

These circumstances have led to the principle of caution ruling strongly last week with every decision subject to the influences of the pandemic. As yet, the impact on current business and sales of raw materials is not very noticeable. At the moment, deliveries are still running according to plan and the first major obstacle will be the interruption caused by the Christmas holidays and Chinese New Year (1 February).

As the end of the year approaches, questions concerning how good leather demand will be in the first quarter of 2022 and how far producers have already stocked up on raw material are becoming increasingly important.

In Europe, we know the rhythms of procurement, but in the main markets in Asia, the situation is less clear. Good sales from almost all countries of origin in the last few weeks lead to the assumption that leather producers may already have stocked up sufficiently, taking advantage of prices. Some deliveries are behind schedule owing to transport problems, and there is the possibility that demand for further raw material will decline in the coming weeks and months.

To avoid this, global leather demand at this time would have to be significantly higher and that is not substantiated with all the information available today. Whatever may be true, the sensitivity of the market has definitely increased in recent weeks. Sales this week were at the lower end of average. This is certainly also because we are waiting for new abattoir prices for December. For the reduced sales, largely unchanged to slightly declining prices were agreed. 

The kill: The kill remained at a fairly high level last week. Males, especially, are being slaughtered, which is not surprising for this time of year. As temperatures have once again dropped to winter levels, we expect demand for the holidays and the weather to keep production at the same high levels in the coming weeks. 

What do we expect: On the one hand, owing to the approaching end of the year, significantly less activity is to be expected in the coming weeks. On the other hand, the situation has become rather nervous, as described at the beginning. Each individual will certainly draw his or her own conclusions and decisions from this. Basically, we assume that no one is interested in major movements at the moment and therefore only a narrow price change is expected.

Share this story: