Last week was more of the same for the U.S. hide market. Sales price for U.S. Steer hides that were steady with those of booked over the last few weeks. But, the number of Steer hides sold may well have fallen short of week’s production. With most of the buying power in Asia out on Autumn holidays, the U.S. market was quite subdued all week. In addition to the holidays in Asia, the leather fair in Milan, Italy also pulled some major U.S. suppliers away from their desks and limited sales. There were rumors that a decent number of wet blue sales were booked by U.S. sellers with European tanners during and around the Milan show. There were a few Asian buyers bidding early in the week, but based on their bids most of those buyers appeared to be on fishing exhibitions, looking for holiday bargains. To our knowledge none were to be found. However, by the end of the week, some tanners submitted some more serous bids. Some business was put together at price levels steady with most recent sales. U.S. cattle slaughter continued its recent pace and that is expected to continue. U.S. cattle feeders have animals to sell and beef packers continue to record very nice per head profits. While U.S. raw and wet blue hide sellers did not sell a week’s production last week, they were able to hold their sale prices steady. As a result, we are leaving our quotes for last week sale prices for U.S. Big Packer Steer hides unchanged from their previous week’s levels. We are calling Heavy Native Steer FOB plant value between $58.00 and $61.00 per piece, the Butt Branded Steer hide price between $54.00 and $56.00 per piece, and the FOB plant price for the Big Packer Heavy Texas Steer hide price to be between $47.00 to $49.00 FOB plant basis.
The Export Sales Report released by the USDA on October 5, 2017 for the week ending Thursday, September 28th showed that a substantial 641,500 whole cattle hide and wet blue equivalents were sold for export during that seven-day period. China was the leading buyer booking 367,600 pieces or 57% of the total sales.
Federally Inspected Slaughter, (FIS) of cattle for the week ending Saturday October 7, 2017, was estimated to be 632,000 head, down from the estimated 648,000 head processed the prior week. Year to Date FIS is up 5.8 percent from last year’s level.
The Asian Autumn Holidays are behind us. U.S. raw and wet blue hide suppliers were able to hold the prices for their productions steady as they resisted numerous bids at lower levels. We feel that with all Asian tanners back to work this week, there may well be an opportunity for U.S. hide sellers to move their sale prices higher. We say this because we feel that tanners’ finished leather business has improved somewhat over the last few weeks. U.S. hide prices are low enough for tanners to make reasonable profits on the finished leather they produce from these hides. It is also worth mentioning that, historically speaking, October, November, and December are the best quality hides produced in the U.S. during any given year. Hope you have a good week. The Major League Baseball playoffs are under way so if nothing else it should be an entertaining week.
Golf
The best way to tell whether any golf gadget will help your game is to try to picture Freddie Couples using one.
Spike marks in the path of an off-line putt will never deflect the ball into the hole.
