May 11
9
Post World War 2, when the South Africans resurrected ostrich farming after the collapse of the markets for ostrich feathers, they investigated other revenue streams. Ostrich Skins discusses the uniqueness of the wonderful skin produced by ostrich and the subsequent leather produced from these skins.
What are the different stages for selling ostrich skins?
- Green/: Skins in the raw state that will have been removed from the bird, cleaned, salted and stored.
- Wet Blue: Skins that a tanner has taken to the first stage of the tanning process that enables long term storage and often used for transporting skins across international borders. Not currently popular with ostrich skins.
- Crust: The finished tanning stage requiring only colouring/dyeing to take the skin to the finished stage.
- Finished: The skin is now leather ready for leather manufacturers to turn the Ostrich leather into finished products. The quality of that leather will depend on many things including grade of the skin and quality of the tanning. There are different types of finish to suit manufacture’s specific requirements.
Worthy of note in this discussion is the impact of size at these different stages when size is also used as a measure to quantify sale price. Currently ostrich skins are also sold on size. The tanning process includes stretching the skins for the drying process. This process increases the size of the skin in crust stage to the skin in the raw state. The size is usually expressed either as square decimetre or square foot.
There are 4 stages in the marketing process:
- Graded Green: Raw skins purchased from farmer by abattoir or trader. Payment of green skins is usually on a per skin basis using subjective size such as small, medium and large.
- Graded Green: Tannery is buying directly from abattoir or a trader. The tannery pays the ostrich farmer or the trader.
- Graded Crust: Tanneries buying directly from the farmer take the skin to Crust stage prior to grading and then base their payment system on the grades and size at crust. The tannery pays the ostrich farmer. Some abattoirs have their own tannery.
- Graded Finished Skin: The tanneries currently sell their finished skins to their buyers priced on a combination of size, colour, grade and finish. The majority of sales will be based on volume sales to provide skins to a specific finish and color. The buyer pays the tannery.
Currently the market expects ostrich skins to be removed in a standard manner (as per illustration) but buyers have the right to request specifications that would suit their needs. Buyers cannot expect this degree of specialization on low volume purchases. Any changes to the norm need to be produced on a contractual basis.
Produced well, ostrich skins have the potential to contribute significant revenue when ostrich farming with ostrich meat as the driving product to ensure sustainable production.
