THE HIDE MARKET - July 26, 2010
The U.S. hide
market ended last week in a stalemate. Prices dropped another
USD 2.00 earlier in the week, and that resulted in a good
round of business done at the lower levels. Packers and
suppliers asked and tried to hold on to the USD 80.00 C&F
price for Steer hides, but a few traders, once again, sold
hides lower and led the way down to USD 79.00 and USD 78.00
C&F for the Steer hides. By week's end,
Heavy Native Steer hides sold at USD 73.00 and USD 74.00,
while Heavy Texas and Butt Branded Steer hides sold at USD
72.00 - all per piece FOB plant. Steer hides appeared
to us to be cleaned up by Friday. The Cow
hide market, for the 2nd week in a row, showed a
good number of hides sold for the week with most offers on the
Holstein and Plump Native Cow hides sold. The Branded Cow
hides were still dragging last week, and despite a few sales
at steady prices, there were still more sellers than buyers
and a number of these Cow hides were still for sale at the end
of the week.
The Export Sales Report
number issued by the USDA on July 22, 2010 for sales made
during the week ending Thursday July 15th showed
259,400 hides and wet blue equivalents sold for export. This
number was adjusted lower due to cancellations of about
350,000 hides to China, Korea, and Hong Kong.
The Federally
Inspected Slaughter (FIS) for the week ending July 24, 2010
was 666,000 head, the exact number as reported the previous
week. For the
same week last year, that slaughter number was 622,000
head.
For this coming week, we
expect tanners to try and move hides prices lower. Universally, shoe
leather tanners report that they have decent backlogs of
orders, but they cannot make leather profitably with the
current hide prices. On the other
hand, the packers, we would assume, have well sold positions
on all their Steer hide productions and will not be lowering
their sales ideas very easily. It could be a serious
stalemate developing. Cow hides, on
the other hand find business spotty. The "premium" Cow hide
productions are well sold and will continue to demand big
prices and few offers, but there are certain less-quality
productions that are still available in quantity and may have
to be discounted to move any volume. Overall, it should be
a quiet summer-like week in the hide
industry.
A
GOLF QUOTE
"The sport of choice for
the urban poor is basketball. The sport for lower level
employees is bowling. The sport for the working class is
football. The sport for middle management is tennis. And the
sport for corporate officers is golf. CONCLUSION: the higher
up you are in the corporate structure, the smaller your balls
become." -U.B.
Daplayer
