The US $ in EURO
1,2400

What happened this week: A difficult, hectic and eventful year is slowly starting to wind down. A year in the hide and skin business which was mostly affected by external influences. Starting with the Iraq war, which paralysed and delivered a lot of insecurity to a great part of the world, followed by the SARS shock, which brought the whole of Asia to a standstill for weeks and in Europe everything was garnished by the constant and accelerating fall of the USD or rise of the € until the end of the year. All this fell into the period of structural changes and a fast rise of the worlds production giant – China, pegged with its currency to the USD. Well, hard to find more and more difficult challenges for a business like hides, skins and leather. And it has cost victims in Europe. Voluntarily and forced closures of hide and skin business as well as tanneries and one can assume, that this was only the tip of the iceberg. The ongoing change in the structure to bigger production units,  rising production costs in Europe combined with increasing obstacles in bureaucracy and administrational (veterinarian)  issues will make the life in the industry constantly more difficult, expensive and less competitive. Not the best preconditions for the business in Europe the

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