This week: Last week was a very quiet week, shortened by public holidays. There was not much time left to organise sales of hides and skins.

The start of the second quarter is often accompanied by a significant slowdown in activity in the leather industry. In central Europe, spring begins after Easter and we enter a period with a large number of public holidays. This is certainly good news for employees, especially as so-called bridging days are often used to create extended weekends. For businesses, production and logistics, however, it is an additional considerable burden.

Planning will become more difficult, both in terms of production in the slaughter industry, but also in terms of knowing which tanners might also close their factories for each public holiday. Logistics is a major problem because lorries and therefore the delivery of containers to the ports can no longer be reliably planned. The constantly changing departure times of the shipping companies and the constantly changing delivery dates for the containers have been a problem ever since the recent attacks in the Red Sea began, but in terms of interrupted weeks owing to public holidays it becomes even more difficult. We can perhaps look forward to the warmer days of spring and summer, but it will be a very challenging phase for work processes.

There was little news from the leather business. There is still a very pessimistic mood in Europe, except among tanners who produce either for the high-quality luxury sector or for niche products. They are benefitting  from reduced raw material prices and are satisfied with their order situation at the moment.

Problems in the automotive and furniture leather sector remain and, if the reactions of tanners from this sector are to be believed, there will be little change in Europe in the coming months. The situation is mixed for the remaining shoe leather tanners and in the leathergoods sector; it all depends on who you work with.

As far as the hides business is concerned, price negotiations with the abattoirs are currently the main focus. In central Europe, there are isolated cases of competitive unrest, which naturally encourages slaughterhouses to flex their muscles again. Anyone taking a realistic look at the market situation can hardly come to the conclusion that price increases can be implemented in the markets or that they could even be a good idea for the coming weeks and months. The few sales and negotiations in Europe this week were therefore very close to the prices recently agreed.

Demand from Asia was very quiet this week and it will become clear next week whether this is due to holidays or actually a decline in demand going into the summer.

The kill: Kills are currently reduced owing to the public holidays. The shift towards poultry and pork for the barbecue season is already clearly noticeable without any significant decline in cattle kill yet. As soon as the weather improves, we will see whether the return of grazing cattle to the pastures will have a greater impact on the kill or whether little will change.

What we expect: At the moment, we see no reason at all for any fundamental price changes. Increased price demands from the meat and livestock industry would certainly not be a particularly good signal and, in combination with falling hide weights, would make the calculation even more difficult. It will be decided by the end of next week how the negotiations will end and whether the difficult overall situation will be taken into account.

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