Market Report 03.01.2025

What happened this week

As you can see, the old year has already come to an end and the new one has begun. We would therefore like to wish all our readers a particularly happy, healthy and, above all, peaceful New Year! Considering all the crazy people who are now politically responsible on this earth, this may be more important than the usual annual wish that is ritualized every year. Last week again saw many attacks with many deaths. What may be going on in the minds of those who think there is any reason to kill innocent people for some supposed purpose will probably remain a mystery forever. The market for hides and skins has not been too good over the last week. This is no surprise, as a large part of the world was closed for the New Year, leaving only a few in Asia who were actually involved in the business at all. Even though forecasts for the year 2025 have been published in almost all the media, the market for leather and the demand for hides are of course not taken into account. This would probably not be a particularly optimistic forecast either. In most sectors that use leather, the forecasts for the coming months are rather grey and foggy. If these assumptions are fundamentally correct, this means that the importance of regular sales will probably take precedence over price. This also means that the position of suppliers of raw hides will be assessed differently depending on their function and that leather demand will no longer be the sole parameter for assessing the market. The only thing that can be said for the past week is that there was still isolated demand from China, initially aimed at finding ’special offers‘. If this was not the case, much of the demand disappeared and what little was left was at least willing to pay the prices of mid-December. In combination with the firmer US dollar, this meant that at least a small step forward could be made in terms of revnues, without this indicating a turnaround in the general market situation.