Weekly U.S. Export Report - information available at:

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