What happened this week: Most of the people this week have spent their time discussing ‘to go’ or ‘not to go’ to the Hongkong leather fair. With the deteriorating reportrs from China and Hongkong many people started from Thursday onwards to cancel definitely their trips. Finally the exhibitors took a wise decision and cancelled resp. postponed the fair to the end of June when hopefully the SARS will be history. The disappointing progress of the conquest of Iraq and the political and economical consequences are also burdening the mood of many people and so remained market conditions under a certain mental pressure. Sales numbers for the week were again much better than expected. Low grades and ox/heifers where in constant demand and added to the regular long term sales. Prices remained, however also this  week under pressure, but at the end reductions were not necessary or only in a very fractional  way. The strong sales for the last four weeks have cleaned most grades up

and only the difficult light weight kips and calf remained in the doldrums. Cows were mixed. Italians continued to bid the their traditional 25/+ kg cowhides down with limited success, finding only individual lots from smaller suppliers at their asking levels. Asian tanners were again not very active. Only selected purchases for dairy cows and heavy bulls were seen. The remaining sales were placed across Europe. One continues to wonder about the massive discrepancy between the present market mood and the clearance of hides, but it seems that the problematic global conditions are still dominating market participants and the big players (tanners) are still maintaining full control about the price developments. On top remains the market still in a reasonably balanced supply and demand situation and is presently well protected against speculative activity. The coming weeks will now get more interesting as the market has now to develop further without the influences of the Hongkong show. It can be assumed, that the trading conditions remain determined by high uncertainty and we remain

reasonably optimistic about the global demand for shoe leathers. Automotive seems to be reasonably steady, despite sales worries and the situation for furniture upholstery leathers lies for us in the dark, because we fail to understand how the demand in the USA is going to develop and consequently Asian and Italian tanners are going to operate. Basically we are now slowly entering the low season. The kill: Continuing on the present levels as far as total numbers are concerned. However, the slaughter of males slowly declines while we expect an increase in cow slaughter over the next weeks. What do we expect? We can not find any absolutely convincing argument why next week should be the week of changes. We are again the week of the abattoir buying where prices need finally a downward adjustment to compensate for the slightly eroding selling prices. Traditionally trading activity slows vastly down until the new prices are fixed. Also we have to assume, that sellers are in a comfortably sold position and premium buyers have their raw material procurements under secure control and do not need to rush for material. Only Asian tanners could create any surprises.