US raw hides and skins did not definitely achieve a rewarding performance in 2018. Looking over data provided and published by USHSLA, Washington’s association of traders, throughout the year both raw hides and wet blue exports declined, in terms of quantity and value as well. Starting our analysis from the bigger market share, during the year “wet/salted hides” dropped by 7% in volumes (that is, 23 million hides) and by 25.7% in terms of value (1.09 billion dollars). China and Hong Kong’s overall shopping have been mostly driving such negative trend: in fact, they respectively decreased by 14.7% in volumes, while revenues went down by 33%. One cannot just blame commercial tensions between The United States and China for that though. Looking at the other main reference markets for US raw hides, Korea’s downturn is noteworthy (-2.8% and -25.3%), while Mexico’s performance proved incongruous: imported volumes have been increasing (+6.4%), but value has been slowing down (-2.4%). Looking at Europe, Italy’s drop is notable (-19.1% and -23.4%). Flicking through data supplied by USHSLA, we find out that wet blue hides, throughout the year, did not do any better. In fact, exports decreased by 19% in terms of volumes (4.7 million hides) and by 13% in terms of value (489.9 million dollars). Italy, which is the main buyer of the US article, declined by 23% and 18% respectively, while China dropped by 24% and 17%.
USA, in 2018 China and Italy buy fewer raw hides: exports of wet blue (-13%) and salted hides (-25.7%) decrease
