Trading was dismal on Friday May 10, except for a few trades for automotive upholstery intended material, after limited volume of hide trades were closed on May 6-10.

Light weight heavy native steer (HNS) hides traded at $31 per piece, unchanged from the day prior, and regular weight butt branded steer (BBS) hides traded down by $0.50 per piece from the last traded levels to $27 per piece. The downward price pressure was driven by continued slow hide demand from automotive tanners.

An automotive hide tanner said that their hide purchases for June were finalized this week at lower volumes than previously expected. They continued by saying the seller pushed for greater volumes of sales of HNS and BBS at current price levels, but the automotive tanner did not have the capacity to hold the inventory if purchased.

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