What happened this week: Everybody was focussed on holidays and a relaxed and easy period of a few weeks ahead of us. Tanners on vacation, kill low, market stable, the best of all worlds. Well, this was until Wednesday, when what had already been building on the financial sector over the past weeks like a thunderstorm on the horizon had been unloaded on Thursday. A decent stock market crash and a sharp drop of commodity prices wiped almost all market gains of 2011 out and raised quickly the question in the hide and skin market of whether the correction will be under way for our commodity as well. As usual there are different opinions. Most sellers lean back and believe that leather orders are still strong enough to absorb hide production and tanners will be still forced to replenish inventories, because  stocks are not allowing them to stay out of the market long enough to build serious pressure on prices. Others see the situation a bit different and fear that this earthquake for commodity prices will also spill into the hide market. Many tanners are not working with reasonable margins and so are they prompted to hope for lower raw material prices. The present situation is triggering and supporting courage to be more aggressive against the suppliers in the hope that sellers will be impressed by the situation and listen to ambitious bids to safeguard revenues.

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