What happened last week: Although holidays are on everybody’s mouth, sales activity was more than acceptable last week. Another round of buying from China was noted as well as some interest from Italy for prompt shipments. Most of that interest has been satisfied and selling prices were almost on asking levels. A few cents may be missing but revenues today are still much better than they were a few months ago. The low slaughter remains the biggest challenge at the moment. Even when sales revenues look reasonable, the rising cost per piece, due to the low slaughter, continues to burden calculations. Across Europe we hear that the kill is about 25% to 50% below the average level expected for this month. This is obviously making butchers pretty ambitious regarding the value for their main by-product. With more and more abattoir companies entering the hide processing and marketing, the position of the traditional catalyst between beef and tanning industry is continuously weakening and losing more and more of its function. As a consequence, we currently see more discussion in the trade about the restructuring process rather than the hide market itself.

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