China decline hurts Brazilian leather exports
13/01/2017
Tanners shipped 193.9 million square-metres of leather, which represents an incrase of 3.8% compared to 2015. This material brought in export earnings of just over $2 billion, a decline of 10.3% compared to the previous year’s total.
Tanning industry association CICB said 2016 had been a difficult year for everyone in the sector. It named a fall in prices in international markets and a decline in demand from China (Brazilian leather’s biggest overseas market) as the two most important factors.
CICB executive president, José Fernando Bello, commented that this downturn in export values had “a highly negative impact” on the industry because 70% of the leather Brazilian tanners produce goes to overseas markets. He pointed out that Brazilian leather manufacturers had worked hard to establish as much business as possible in export markets, taking part in industry fairs and visiting clients in all parts of the world.
The organisation also pointed out that exports of finished leather grew by 8.7% in terms of area year on year, with crust growing by 54.3%. At the same time, wet blue exports decreased by 1.7%.
Mr Bello said he expects exports to increase by 5% in terms of area in 2017.
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