Market Report 20.06.2025

What happened this week

As has been the case for a long time now, sales and trading activity this week can best be described as uneventful. In Europe, companies are already busy planning for the holiday season and beyond. To date, we have not encountered anyone who gives the impression that they could still deliver positive surprises in terms of their raw material requirements. In other words, leather demand and the general mood are focused solely on managing and maintaining the status quo, and certainly not on the question of whether additional raw materials will be needed before the summer holidays. The question of how long individual businesses will actually close this year is much more exciting. The official holiday dates are known in almost all cases, but that does not necessarily mean that stable raw materials will be used during or around this period. It is possible that the re-tanning and finishing departments will continue to work , but the processing of raw materials in the beamhouses may be reduced earlier or for longer. However, the latest information has not yet been released and, as always, hope dies last. In terms of overseas business, the situation in China remains problematic for us because the Chinese authorities are still not commenting in any way on whether and when they are prepared to lift the ban on raw materials from Germany due to foot-and-mouth disease case in January. Fortunately, this problem does not currently exist in almost all other significant sales markets. Unfortunately, in the absence of reliable information, it is not possible to say whether recent cases of African swine fever in western Germany may also play a role here. The fact is, however, that the difficulties in exporting to China mean that some of the usual export opportunities over the summer are currently closed. Of course, this does not apply to our colleagues in Germany’s neighbouring countries, which gives them a current advantage. The main problem here is, of course, cow hides, which simply cannot be sold in their entirety in the European leather industry without the Chinese market. There were rumours this week about very low bids for cow hides from Italy, but it is very difficult to say whether these can be interpreted as genuine buying interest. Supplier bullying can, of course, also be carried out via the price, or to put it more simply, if you do not need or want any goods in July and August, then ultimately any price offer is justifiable. The situation for bull hides and heifers remains somewhat more stable overall, although we continue to believe that it will be difficult to defend the actual prices in the long term without a significant change in leather demand. However, here too, most planning has already been done for the summer holidays, and therefore, even with major changes in demand and kill, major price changes are unlikely. What this means for discussions and indications for the holiday season and the weeks that follow will probably only become clear in the coming weeks and is a different story. In terms of business, it was another quiet week, with sales limited to renewals of regular programmes and isolated sales to the Indian subcontinent. This week, too, price changes were rather marginal for the relatively manageable quantities. To be honest, what is not attracting interest at the moment can hardly be made more attractive by changing the price.