What happened this week: There is more and more of a holiday mood in the trade. While in Europe people are mainly busy winding the activities down, Asian tanners were a bit more active this week. The number of sales, however, remained pretty limited, because bids were below asking levels and the steep fall of the US$ during the week made a lot of offers obsolete as the week progressed. Buyers were certainly not willing to compensate for the currency market and as a consequence a number of bids and requests were not completed. But despite this, one could see that there is the expected need to buy in China and upholstery tanners will eventually have to replenish their stocks for the period after their New Year festival. They are obviously not in a rush as they know that their main suppliers, as well as their competitors, will also take a break, so there will be no activity in raw materials. As in previous years, many of them consider this an improved position for carrying out purchasing negotiations with their suppliers, and as a result it was pretty obvious that many interested buyers from the Far East are still at the research and analysis state and didn’t feel under any pressure to make immediate decisions when their price ideas were not met. In addition the purchasing terms are further deteriorating, with extended L/C terms and other requests burdening the price calculations. So, it is quite difficult to make ends meet at the moment.
