Full-year figures show rise in volume of US hide exports in 2020
Leather and Hide Council of America (LHCA) has published full-year figures for hide exports from the US in 2020.
Meat companies and traders exported a total of 26.7 million US cattle hides in 2020. Of these 23.8 were wet-salted and 2.9 million were wet blue. In terms of overall volume, these figures represent an increase of 12.9% compared to 2019. Exports of wet-salted hides rose by 19% in volume, while shipments of wet blue fell by 21%.
An increase in export volumes looked unlikely in monthly reports throughout 2020, but LHCA has explained that it had been tracking inaccuracies between weekly and monthly sales figures and export data for some time. LHCA informed US Customs about these discrepancies, which prompted the agency to conduct an audit of its data. As a result, at the start of February, US Customs published revised data, which showed that between March and September 2020 a large number of wet-salted cattle hide exports to China were not properly counted in the data.
The overall value of hide exports in 2020 was $874.3 million, with $579.8 million from wet-salted and $294.5 million from wet blue. Combined, the value was down by 24.3%. For wet-salted, the decline was 24% year on year while, for wet blue, it was 25%.
On average, across the whole of 2020, the export price of wet-salted cattle hides was $24.33 per piece and the corresponding price for wet blue was $101.35. In contrast, the average price of exported wet-salted hides in 2019 was $38.18 each, with wet blue costing an average of $107.06.
