A turbulent week is coming to an end. However, the turbulence came less from daily trading and more from a flood of emails from China on Wednesday reporting that import licences for German and Spanish hides were no longer being issued at one port. This caused a great deal of unrest because the information was very fragmentary and not very meaningful. It is still not one hundred percent clear what the real and actual situation really is. As it seems, it is only about shipments that are either on their way or have already arrived in port without a valid import licence which should already be granted prior to shipment. Final clarity could not be achieved by the end of the week today. So at least administrative matters are providing some variety, if the trading activities are already not providing any great entertainment. Moreover, market activity was once again below average this week. In Europe, people are now preparing for the next deals for the period until the holidays and this is likely to be another very difficult and possibly not very friendly conversation. The slaughter industry is insisting on unchanged prices and whatever policy may be behind this, there are always market participants who do not have the necessary clarity or it is the marketing arms of the slaughter companies that do not want to accept price adjustments for their own strategic and political reasons. Ultimately, there is not much that can be done about this, because the first owner

decides on the supply in terms of quantity and price. However, it will probably lead to the tanners looking for other alternatives or even – as many are already announcing – simply reducing their production again as much as possible. A large part of the goods is not needed at the moment and a large part of the production only serves to maintain a certain minimum quantity, which is simply necessary for the operation of a leather factory. However, many factories cannot reduce much further if they do not want to lose qualified workers and do not want to fall below the minimum capacity utilisation of the waste water plants. This path already a few weeks before the summer holiday, the length of which is still the subject of much debate, is not particularly positive news either. One thing can be said with certainty at the moment, it is by no means the price of the raw material that determines the demand for leather. So, we continue to wait for the great unknown to trigger the surge in leather demand without having met anyone in recent months who has presented us with an interesting idea of how, why and when this might happen and who is going to trigger this.

The kill