What happened this week: Despite the holiday season and  more customers having left for the holidays it was at the end a more interesting week than the previous ones. The reason for this was a round of underlying activity in the dairy cow market. Underlying because a lot of interest was quite clearly a research to test if there is a chance for bargain hunting in the coming weeks. While Italian tanners were relatively quickly willing to accept steady money for cows for delivery after the holidays, were Asian buyers a bit more cautious and except some trader short covering not yet willing to give already in. However, it was quite obvious that

they are preparing for purchases in the coming weeks. Initiated certainly also by the relatively limited supply from the USA. So went the week quite exactly according to our expectations – if finally the interest is turned into orders. The bull market was less active. Mainly because most of the programs have already been concluded and for customers outside Europe our male hides are simply too expensive compared to their alternatives. Worrying have been again some delays of shipments from European customers as well as payment delays and requests for payment extensions due to the holidays. In general one can feel, that the gap of success between the few

leading companies in Europe which are either larger and industrialised or small and specialized and the others is constantly widening. The kill: The kill stabilized on the slightly improved levels. However, we have to wait if the new animal feed scandal is going to affect the kill. A large number of German farms are temporarily  banned and we don’t know yet how the consumer is going to react. Consequently it is impossible to predict the  kill in the short term. What do we expect? Interesting is the fact, that our market focus moves again from bulls to cows. We don’t expect significant price changes in the coming week, but lifted pressure on cows and steady prices for bulls.