Market Report 30.05.2025

What happened this week

Once again, there was no great momentum in the market this week. How can one expect this when the erratic decisions on customs policy in America change almost every day. The effects are so diverse that hardly anyone is planning for the longer term or even knows how business will develop after the summer holidays. Why after the summer holidays, because in principle, at least in Europe, the planning is already largely complete. We are actually once again, or perhaps better said, still in a situation in which the glass can still be seen as half full or half empty. Of course, the world does not stand still and the same applies to the drums in the leather factories. Based on the reduced capacities, which they already adjusted last year, production is running more or less unchanged. For Europe at least, this means that we are a long way from the possibilities and levels we had until shortly before Covid and the two years afterwards. In other words, this means that not much has changed since last summer. The question remains, however, which everyone has to ask themselves at the moment, whether everything that goes into the drums will also be delivered continuously as finished leather in the end. There have been justified doubts about this for some time now. So far, this has not had any major consequences in Europe, but whether this will remain the case after the summer is open to debate. Somehow the stocks have to be cleared eventually. In any case, there are more and more conversations asking whether anyone can find business opportunities for the hides in processed state that have not been sold for a while. For the raw material supplier, this is of course much less of a problem and they only really need to seriously consider certain hide categories that are not currently being bought by the tanneries. There are certainly options for this if you are not quite so particular about prices. In a nutshell, this means that if you really want to, at least the reduced production of raw materials can be sold at the moment. However, this in no way means that the problems they have created further down the chain have even been remotely solved. The export figures in the USA, which were published today, also attracted attention. After many weeks in which volumes were very low, the opposite was the case last week. It remains to be seen at what prices and whether all these hides and sales will fall victim again to the war of tariffs. With or without tariffs, in the end the producers will have to make a decision about the material at some point and somehow. They simply cannot and must not tear down the supply chains. We have also already spoken to our regular clients this week about deliveries up to the summer holidays and in most cases the corresponding agreements have been made. In most cases, the prices only changed slightly and, depending on the initial situation, small discounts had to be accepted here and there to ensure that deliveries were not interrupted.