This week: There is little to report on the market this week. The reason is that everything in Germany is currently centred around the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease.

What was initially just a suspicion last Friday quickly became a certainty. How a small herd of buffalo in the Berlin region became infected with the virus will certainly require a detailed investigation. There are many rumours and one can only hope that there is a real willingness to investigate the origin of the outbreak.

For the time being, however, this does not matter for our business, because with the confirmation of the infection, Germany also loses its status as a country free of foot-and-mouth disease. This is an essential condition for most health certificates for export to countries outside the EU. This means that Germany is currently subject to a de facto export ban for most animal by-products, including hides and skins.

Fortunately, there have been no further confirmed cases to date and there is therefore justified hope that the spread of the disease has been prevented. However, it is still too early to say for sure. Fortunately, the transport of animal by-products within the EU is only prohibited for products that come directly from the restricted zone. This means that the transport and delivery of hides and skins within the EU is not restricted from the rest of Germany.

However, the not insignificant proportion of exports to countries outside the EU, and China in particular, will be affected and this will have an impact on the market. The idea that prices will collapse as a result of this cannot really be justified.

There are still other uses for the hides and there is also the market in the rest of Europe. As the entire market is currently in a phase of upheaval anyway, a small, localised problem in Germany is of no real central importance for the general market development.

Regardless of what happens in Germany, the real factor influencing market development is the demand for leather in combination with opportunities in alternative markets. As people in Asia are now preparing for the festive season around the Lunar New Year (January 29), customers are really only interested in what happens to their current contracts rather than what might happen to prices on the German market. There have been no new sales this week, at least for us, so there is nothing to report.

The kill: Slaughter was not really affected by the events. At least we did not notice any major changes. The numbers remained at a normal level for January, slightly reduced but still stable and normal for the time of year.

What we expect: Under the current conditions, a forecast for our market for this coming week makes little sense. We cannot be active on the export markets at the moment. In Asia people are more concerned with closing down their production and focusing on family celebrations for the Lunar New Year. As demand for leather remains relatively weak, there are no great fears of a significant change in prices anyway. Rather, people are probably interested in what will happen immediately after the inauguration of the new US president. In Europe, too, we cannot expect any major new impetus in the coming weeks.

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