Tanners serving the upper market seem to lack a sufficient amount of orders to keep their production running in full. It may be that some have moved into the medium quality end price section which would explain, in part, the revival of activity in Northern Italy. The big question mark at this stage of the year is always how strong the winter production cycle for furniture leather is going to be. Raw material prices can’t actually be prohibitive as many hides around the world are hitting the very low end of the price cycle. Going against this theory are the rising costs of production and chemicals when, at the same time, nobody expects selling prices to be increased. So, what will suffer at the end of the day? The raw material will, at least in volume production, and there would need to be a massive revival of leather in fashion to convince the consumer to spend more for leather products.

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