Market Report 15.08.2025

What happened this week

Today, Friday, marks the peak of the holiday season in Europe. In many Catholic areas, 15 August is also a public holiday and therefore this week was shortened even without the holiday period in many areas of the leather industry in Europe. It doesn’t make much difference, because very few leather factories are already back from their holidays. Only in the northern regions of Europe, the first factories have already returned or will return in the next week and resume production. For everyone else, it will take another week or two. This is why the first talks are already being held again and of course everyone is now waiting for the next decisions, which will probably be made politically in the coming weeks. However, this means that the time of waiting and hoping that the findings will emerge on their own. If you needed a bit more of political ‚Absurdistan‘, you only had to follow the reports on the international negotiations on plastic pollution in the last few days or look at the oh-so-new findings regarding the overproduction and utilisation of textiles. It is all about recycling, but nobody talks about the natural alternative humans had been thriving on for centuries. If you look at the position of leather in comparison and the attacks that have been levelled against leather for years by the ‘environmentally conscious NGOs’, you get the feeling that you are surrounded by lunatics rather than responsible politicians. The big mistake that has been made in Europe remains the lack of humility about what can and should actually be realised in the global political environment. Dreams are and remain permissible, but they are not good counsellors. Political uncertainty weighed on business again last week. India sees itself threatened by a possible 50 per cent tariff on exports to the USA and in China, the general economic data is also not conducive to spreading much optimism in the leather industry ahead of the trade fair in Shanghai. Europe is still on holiday and so there was simply hardly anyone to talk to seriously about business. In the European automotive leather industry, the reduced order expectations are now being compounded by the fear that the very poor results of the car manufacturers for the first half of the year will now also put pressure on prices for leather for the next negotiations. This is not a particularly favourable prospect for the talks in the near future. Slaughter is still relatively low, which is probably why many people are not yet giving it much thought, but anyone thinking about the trend a little further ahead cannot help but take these issues into account. Once again, there have only been a few isolated transactions, which are not really worth mentioning when assessing the market.