  Leading neutron (LN) production in $ep$ collisions at high energies is
investigated using the color dipole formalism and taking into account
saturation effects. We update the treatment of absorptive effects and estimate
the impact of these effects on LN spectra in the kinematical range that will be
probed by the Electron Ion Collider (EIC) and by the Large Hadron electron
Collider (LHeC). We demonstrate that Feynman scaling, associated to saturation,
is not violated by the inclusion of absorptive effects. Moreover, our results
indicate that the LN spectrum is strongly suppressed at small photon
virtualities. These results suggest that absorptive effects cannot be
disregarded in future measurements of the $\gamma \pi$ cross section to be
extracted from data on leading neutron production.
