FHA will have a complete list of Agents and routes this coming week on our website.FHA will have agents,routes or drop off points in most states.If we do not have any routes or agents in yous state please call the Cambridge office (608)423-4814 for info on shipping your fur.
For bags and tags call the Cambridge office to have them shipped.If you have NAFA bags and tags you can use them and we will give you new bags and tags along with an FHA receipt when you drop off your fur.
Your account number will be mailed to you after it is received into our system,this will allow you to set up your online account and see grades prior to sale.
For shippers using routes to drop that do not have FHA receipts please allow extra time to have agent fill out receipt info.
In some states we will have two trucks running routes,this will help keep routes on time.
Looking ahead at the fur market it looks like the harvest of some articles will be lower than expected do to the weather.This can only help fur prices in the near future.
We are expecting to have a very large turn out of buyers attending sales this year,being the only auction house with a fresh supply of wild fur,this can only help the price and clearances.

Good luck handling the volume that can be coming in this year.
Last time you logged in here you were recovering from your trip to Canada doing those Saskatchewan coon.

Greg,
Thanks for posting this info.
For those planning to ship who have not before, do you recommend calling to set up an account in advance to avoid delays at pick up locations?

Looks like FHA has acquired all the northern stores(North West Co.) as fur buying and consigning agents across northern Canada.Many native trappers were told that the Northern stores were not buying fur anymore.Good to hear this is no longer the case.
Great to see FHA stepping up for trappers.

Being the only auction house for wild fur, this would be a great time to lock the door on the PT room and see where the real market is at.

There might be an advantage to just having one auction house in North America now. In the past with two auction houses you usually had one auction following the other auction in a fairly short period of time. The new situation will prevent the option of " let's hold off on this auction, next week I may be able to get them cheaper over at xxxx".
I don't know if it will play out this way, but it might.

I have been thinking the same thing Wag.

This will be an interesting season with only one auction house handling wild fur. How everything shakes out remains to be seen.

I agree that FHA will be getting a lot more fur than previous seasons. I believe they have a plan in place to handle grading it. Which will involve 3 facilities - North Bay, Canada. Cambridge, Wisconsin (probably coon and maybe rats will be graded there). Winnipeg, Canada (it has been announced that coyotes will be graded there).

FHA has also announced that they will not be accepting dealer goods that have limits. All goods received, no matter who they are from, will be inter-sorted (part lots). Also, they are NOT providing advances to any shippers.

The interesting part will be at the auction. Will FHA hold to prices they determine to be fair market prices (thus protecting the shipper) or will they sell goods for what the room wants to offer (thus generating revenue to pay the additional expenses they have incurred with all the extra fur they received).

It is assumed, and rightfully so, that coyotes will do well. But what about beaver, raccoon, otter and other items that have struggled price wise the past few years. Do they hold them, knowing full well there will be more goods coming in for the May sale. Or will they take what they are offered.

Guess we will have to wait and see.

I hope they sell the commercial grade product freely into the market.

Shippers will not have to get an account number ahead of time,for the most part it will be easier to send them after we receive your fur.Having worked for auction houses and large dealers (Cambridge Hide and Fur,Hudson Bay London,Hudson bay Canada,Nafa from the start)volume is one thing I have handled.
In the past few years here at FHA we are relying less and less on the private treaty as a way of selling fur,very seldom do you get more after the sale than you could have got in than auction.The best way to turn this market around is to keep very low or no inventory.When NAFA started keeping large inventory,s of unsold fur it did not help the price going into the next year.
Any year you go into a market with no or very little inventory there is a price increase,inventory has put a strain on a lot of dealers that rely on cash flow to keep buying.
It is our plans in the future to go back to having more and earlier sales to give dealers and trappers the ability to have a cash flow with out waiting till the end of season for a check,relying less on advances and keeping fur moving into the market.With having one auction house there will be the ability even on low production years to make changes that will help this happen.

Again thanks Greg for your updates and answers. Sounds like a sound business plan going into this selling season and beyond. Shippers should be prepared for some low sale prices on some items to keep inventory from piling up but may be good for the market in the long run.

Thanks for posting Greg.
A question.
Does FHA have a policy that addresses hides sent in that are of no value in this market. Not talking about fur unsold, that can reasonably be expected to sell at
the next auction or two. Asking about hides, that have no potential to generate enough revenue justifying the handling costs incurred by the auction house
Thank You

Greg are you offering a put up service from all your agents? Or Is Cambridge the only place you offer a put up service?

I think I'll help the market by not shipping, so your inventory does not get too high, so you have to help the market out by selling fur cheap to help the market out.

Sounds like adjustments will need to be made over the next couple of years to see what works best for everybody involved. I am especially interested in seeing how the international buyers/brokers adjust to the new deal in the first auction or two.

Of special concern is how this will affect country buyers. Seems to me they have always been able to hedge their bet to some degree by having control over the fur they shipped in. (Dealer lots). But if it is all intersorted they will be at the mercy of the auctioneers gavel with more at stake than most of us. I would think that would make country buyers more conservative on what they can offer based on this new arrangement.

From the FHA website: 12. Unsold pelts are not returnable. They will be reoffered on subsequent sales until sold or in the case of poor quality skins to be declared “no value”. Skins that have no commercial value will be turned over to the Ministry of Natural Resources for disposal. These skins will appear on your printout as “ no value”

Fur of no value are for the most part xl and down low grades,bad taints or very badly damaged,they are put thru 2 sales,if after that there is no interest we will discard them and they show up on sale report as NV(no value).
Routes will be running in most states,or we have drop off points to cover state.For now there may be some driving to get to an agent or fur stop,this will be addressed in the future.
I can remember when the Hudson Bay Company decided to stop fur sales,panic was wide spread and we lost a lot of country buyers,the panic was short lived as new selling policies went into place,the company that did this was NAFA,At the end they went back to the Hudson Bay Company's policy,over advance,put in storage.history repeated itself.

The way things are developing there will be little difference between shipping to NAFA before and FHA now. Pick up routes will be similar. Much of the fur will go to old NAFA facilities for processing, and be handled by previous NAFA employees. The buyers at the auction will be the same buyers that were bidding (or not) at NAFA auctions. Pretty much everything similar except solvency of the auction company, which I guess is a pretty big deal.

Sounds like a fire sale on both ends.

Thanks Greg for the update.