and, if necessary, use the opportunity to reduce stocks. Normally, one would perhaps expect that the falling prices could be used more as an opportunity to stock up for the second half of the year, but this is not really noticeable, at least until now. Only in Asia can one see this kind of routine. There has been some interest and enquiries this week, but the bid prices simply do not fit into our currently still valid price grid. There are sellers in other European countries who are able and willing to sell at much lower prices than ours, and this is of course used as a reference for what they would be willing to pay for our material. However, with the current prices at the slaughterhouses, this cannot be realised in any way. This really only leaves the decision of whether one expects better times and prices or whether one thinks that today’s loss might be the better one for the next months. Apart from that, other topics are coming more and more to the foreground again. Even if one does not like to talk about it openly overall, one notices that the leather industry obviously has to plan its cash-flow much more precisely again in view of the reduced summer revenues and the strongly increased costs. Even if there are no serious problems yet, the payments are not coming in at the same speed as they used to in the last few years. Business and sales this week were rather below average. While we in Europe are currently waiting for the new deals for the coming month, the prices received from the overseas markets were simply not workable. These were not small differences either, but 20 or more percent were not uncommon. This meant that sales remained very sporadic and limited to individual deals.

What do we expect

We are now shortly back to the next round of buying and pricing at the abattoirs. The outcome will most certainly affect the trend and business for longer than just the usual next few weeks. Without a serious adjustment to the world market and the possibility to squeeze out other suppliers via price, sales opportunities will probably remain limited. The only hope for a real revival of demand can really only be had for Asia, provided that prices there are considered speculative, attractive for the second half of the year. However, this is only really possible if one is prepared to actually be able to calculate the corresponding offers, because otherwise the only thing that helps in the end is to wait and see.