What happened this week: The week is not particularly worth to report. Most of the trade tried to settle in again after their trips to the Far East and so was the market activity more on the low side, with also many already left for a long Easter break. Anyway, as much as business was lackluster it was not nil. Some follow- up trades from Hongkong were still concluded and some of the regular European program sales were also due for renewal, so that hide sales reached – in numbers – better levels than the activity would made believe. Price negotiations were tough, but at the end prices remained entirely steady with asking levels easier obtainable on dairy cows and heifers, while bulls were a tough struggle. Well, not a surprise as this was anyway expected. Total numbers were almost evenly divided between cows, heifers and bulls and so were also the destinations with half of the sales going to Asia and the other half staying in Europe. News from the leather business are not encouraging – at least not from Europe. A struggling Spanish operation finally went into chapter 11 and others are said to follow soon, if not the great surprise is happening and

leather orders flooding in, in the weeks to come. Nobody really believes that. Also the other European tanning centres are not delivering any particular good news as far as orders and activity is concerned. Hongkong did not seem to be the great success for European tanners in general and now the hopes are transferred to Bologna at the end of the month. Well, we fail to believe, that Lineapelle can turn things to the better for the Europeans and would already be happy if it could create some new fashion trends which would at least trigger some sampling and encouragement for specialty tanners in Europe. If one likes it or not, we are starting to enter the low production season in Europe now and the question is, if we ever had a high season this year and can it still get any less. One can hardly get away from the fact, that the next six month will be decisive on the future of many leather productions in Europe. Can necessary downsizing operations be successful, are the financial blankets long enough to get through the general crisis and who can find its position in the dramatically changed global production structure? So, the market and the business depends more than ever on Asia in the months to come. In the meantime remains the abattoir buying molesting.

As a useless and premature defensive act against the new potential competition for raw material deriving from the investor into the van Buren plant, one player decided to raise prices at an isolated abattoir without any justification from the market. This makes discussions extremely difficult when just steady prices - at best - would have been appropriate.  The kill: Statistics released today confirmed the impression of the better kills in the last weeks. Slaughter in the first quarter was above a year ago in particular in cows. Due to the exhausted milk quota of many more dairy cows than normal had to find their way to the abattoirs. Officials expect now a kill under par for the next months and a reduction for the year of around 2-3 %. In the meantime will  slaughter now be reduced due to the Easter holidays . What do we expect: We still don’t see any changes. Activity will also next week be burdened by the Easter vacations. Slaughter will be low and most of the hides produced seem to be sold already. We have to watch if the Asian customers continue their weekly, regular purchasing as this prevents the market from further corrections. The next junction for the market development might be the end of this month around Lineapelle. We still believe that the narrow price band remains intact. Happy Easter!