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Drought leads to elephant hide shortage

Published: 22nd Mar 2024
Author: By Johnny Kleynhans (FSLTC-UK)

Bulawayo, Zimbabwe – For a couple of reasons, the consultancy Legacy Exotic Leather Specialists (LELS) hasn’t progressed since it opened in January.

The first is getting through the licensing bureaucracy, the more serious is the prevailing shortage of raw elephant hide.

We will however continue with consultancy and agency business.

The severe drought experienced has impacted hugely on the availability of raw hide. 

Normally from December through April, ‘problem animal control’ (PAC) animals are common, but sadly the drought has seriously affected rural farmers in our part of the country. As they've had crop failures, animals have little attraction to raid.

This raw hide situation has drastically affected the normal production levels. This, coupled with increased demand, leaves exotic leather tanners in a dilemma. 

However, the official hunting season looms, which sort of produces more hides, but not the quality we need. The reason is that hunters want and pay for trophy animals, which are bulls. Big elephant hides, apart from being more difficult to process, give a much lower finished yield per sq. ft. than normal PAC animals, which are normally non-trophy elephants.

So in a nutshell, demand certainly exceeds supply this year, which in turn aggravates the market prices. This leads to an auction type scenario, where customers now bid higher to try to secure what little is available. 

As I see it, the prices offered are short lived, as with other exotics that ebb and flow.

Tanners have had to keep production alive with less profitable leathers, that fight against bigger producers.

So it's not all hunky dory right now as we lean on resilience and prayer to get us through.
 

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