Market report 03.03.2023

A week of hard work and extremely tough negotiations is coming to an end. After many talks about the new agreements for the month of March at the trade fair in Milan were not brought to a conclusion, the negotiations had to be brought to a result in some way this week. This would certainly have been much easier if the prices at the slaughterhouses had not already been increased by some colleagues in advance and in anticipation of rising sales prices. Rising prices for split and individual deals for special categories and qualities were often used as explanations for this. The low kill in February certainly also played an important role. However, higher prices are an extremely sensitive issue at the moment, at least in the European leather industry. The leather lagging orders and the increased costs are causing great problems for many tanners, so rising raw material prices do not fit into the picture at all. The high level of uncertainty regarding leather orders for the next few months is also not leading to increasing optimism and a certain willingness to take risks in the procurement of hides. This made negotiations on price increases extremely difficult and in the end all good relations had to be called upon to reach any kind of solution. In the end, probably once again no one is happy. For the tanners, the higher prices put a strain on their calculations and for us the small price increases will not be enough to compensate for the increased cost prices at the

The kill

The kill recovered this week as expected. The numbers are still not particularly impressive, but the extremely deep dip that occurred around carnival time this year is fortunately behind us again. The weather is still very wintry, which is why we are initially assuming that productions will not change much in the next few weeks at the current level until Easter.

What do we expect

We assume that the next week will see a return to calm in Europe and that people will turn their attention to other tasks rather than hide prices for the time being. Further developments in China and Asia will certainly remain influenced by the situation in the lime split market. Up to now, there is no one who speaks of an improvement in leather demand. It is rather the case that the quantities and planning for the next season are still insufficient and by no means reliable. Accordingly, raw material purchases are filling production without really being covered by reliable leather orders. This makes the market situation extremely fragile and the line between optimism and pessimism narrower than ever.