Market Report 29.11.2024

What happened this week

It remains the case that the last quarter of the current year in no way corresponds to the usual developments of the last quarters of other years. The challenges lie much less in processing sales and responding to enquiries than in ensuring that all contracts are processed on time. Logistics is a big problem. The shipping companies seem to have abandoned all planning and what was known for so many years as reliable conference shipping has now fallen back to what used to be called tramp shipping. Ships come and go as they please, deadlines are not met, booked shipments are cancelled at short notice and the handling in the ports leaves more than a little to be desired. All at the expense of the person paying for the party, of course. By all accounts, things are not expected to get much better in the first quarter either. The Chinese New Year with its interruptions in the ports in Asia is always a challenge even in normal years. How will the shipping companies deal with it this year? We’ll find out in eight weeks‘ time. Otherwise, the market is becoming increasingly divided into two worlds. In Asia, leather production still seems to be relatively constant and stable. However, most customers, especially in China, are firmly convinced that the one-way street of prices is far from over. For cowhides in particular, the WeChat groups have obviously decided to try and reduce prices significantly once again. This is somewhat at odds with what is being reported from other supplier countries, but you always start somewhere. In Europe, the year is slowly coming to an end. The delivery programmes, which are traditionally planned in advance and coordinated with fixed delivery dates, are being adhered to and ensure that part of the production is largely secured until week 51. The possible connections from mid-January are not yet being discussed and this may not actually happen for another two weeks. So another week comes to a relatively uneventful end. The work in logistics and administration is very challenging, while sales activity is rather manageable. As a result, there were only a few sales to Asia this week and once again the real interest was in heavier, male hides, whereas only very aggressive price offers were seen for the classic female goods. These were hardly worthy of further consideration and therefore no real and serious business negotiations took place.