Leatherbiz Weekly this week includes our exclusive fortnightly market intelligence report, The Leather Pipeline. In this latest report, we bring an analysis of the automotive leather sector.
The main findings are that automotive leather production is definitely down, just as car sales around the globe have slowed. Anecdotally, there are signs that automotive leather producers may have reduced their output by more than the decline in car sales would appear to justify.
It says: “The biggest unknown today, at least for us, remains the question of leather penetration in vehicles. We have come to the conclusion that the amount of leather consumed is declining significantly. On average it seems that automotive leather production has declined somewhere in the region of 20%, while the decline in sales of the models that traditionally use leather have only declined by around 5%.”
In spite of this, the report says that there is still substantial optimism among automotive tanners that the market will pick up for them after the summer holidays.