Sooner or later, something will have to give in the leather world, either prices for finished leather and leather goods will have to rise or raw materials will have to fall in value, starting with green prices, or maybe both. Those in the middle have taken up all of the slack over the past two years and there really is nothing left to squeeze out, writes TheSauerReport

Higher labour costs, higher freight rates, higher green prices, higher chemical costs and lower selling prices have all been absorbed in-house from the supplier to the tanner. Now energy bills that were on the rise already have been exacerbated by the war between Russia’s Putin and Ukraine.

The only place to look for price relief is at the top or the bottom of the leather supply chain, which means lower green prices or higher end consumer leather prices; probably both.