France, bags keep leather industry afloat in the first six months of 2019

Good news from leather goods. In the first six months of 2019, revenues coming from French tanning industry increased by 9.1% on annual basis. Bags have been driving such positive accomplishment, despite a difficult scenario: as reported by the Conseil Nationale du Cuir (the National Leather Council), France’s leather goods manufacturers also augmented their turnover, which went up by 8.6%. Considering production investments, recently carried out in the industry, this is not much of surprise.

A difficult economic situation

Nevertheless, in the six-month-period France’s leather business has been going through a number of problems. In fact, manufacturing of finished leather has decreased in all its segments (bovine -1.5%, sheep -5.3%, goat -8.9%), with the only exception of calfskin (+4.2%). Overall imports increased by 5%, while exports dropped by 7%. Ahead of leather tanning, raw material business is in trouble as well: in fact, in the period provisions have been slowing down (only calves and goats are running steady) so much so that imports rose by 4%, whereas exports declined considerably, as they slumped by 33%.

The product

As we said, leather goods are doing great in terms of revenues. Yet, at the same time, CNC (which recently arranged a meeting to discuss about sustainability) stressed the fact that production of women’s bags (with regard to all materials) has been decreasing: -8.8%. As regards footwear, from January until June its business trend turned out to be negative in all performance segments: in fact, value dropped by 7.6% as much as manufacturing volumes (-5.7%). Only the average retail price has gone up.

Picture taken from CNC website

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