The figures from the Leather and Hide Council of America (LHCA) cover January to June 2021 and show China as the dominant export destination overall. For fresh salted hides, Vietnam has overtaken China year-on-year for wet blue hides, taking 21% of the exports.
There are also dramatic increases for both Brazil and Mexico in the report. Mexico has imported a total of 3.8 million hides from the US, an increase of 187% on the same period last year, while Brazil saw a jump of 279% from 117,000 hides to 445,000.
While Mexico took second place for number of US hides imported, Korea came in third at 2.1 million US hides imported from January to June 2021, an increase of 62% year-on-year.
