Market Report 01.05.2026

What happened this week

Another week has passed without any significant activity in the market. This is not particularly surprising, as many parts of Europe had a long weekend due to the May Day holiday. In China and parts of Asia, it was not just a single public holiday, but several days off, meaning that many market participants had already adjusted to this period in advance. Accordingly, interest in purchasing bovine hides remained very limited. Where any demand could be identified at all, it was mainly focused on very cheap material rather than the standard selections that normally form the basis for leather production. As a result, attention remained less on actual business transactions and more on geopolitical developments, particularly the question of how the situation in the Gulf region will continue to evolve. For the leather industry, the supply of tanning chemicals is increasingly becoming an issue. From various sources, one hears that the supply pipeline in certain areas could break down once the remaining stocks in Europe have been used up. The background appears to be that a substantial part of these chemicals, or their raw components, depends on inputs that are currently not sufficiently available. In addition, finished chemicals, which are usually produced in Asia, have recently been increasingly purchased by Asian tanneries themselves. No one knows exactly when and to what extent this could become a real problem, but it certainly needs to be monitored closely. In our region, the discussion is in any case less about individual sales of raw hides and increasingly about how the overall structure of the industry may change over the coming months. We have already reported on this several times in recent weeks. Many decisions remain open, and even once they are made, they are unlikely to be implemented immediately, but rather at some point during the remainder of the year. Within the leather industry, the focus is increasingly on the orders that still exist. Tanneries are paying very close attention to being supplied with exactly the material that matches these orders. Raw hides, however, can only meet these requirements to a limited extent, as they naturally produce a broader range of qualities. In addition, prices for different raw material types and prices for finished leather often no longer really fit together at the moment, which is also linked to higher production costs. Overall, one could almost have skipped the market report this week: there were only very few sales, demand was mainly for lower-quality material, and prices barely changed.