How do high wood prices and wood shortages affect forest owners, sawmills and carpenters?
Three of the protagonists assess the situation in different ways.
District - The timber is scarce - this is what echoes through the media forest these days.
To blame are the eaten bark beetles, the insatiable American construction market and the associated price increases.
We asked three players in the wood industry from the district for their assessment of the current situation.
The forest owner
Of course, the forest owners would also notice something of the shortage of wood, says Alexander Necker, managing director of the Holzkirchen association of forest owners.
“Wood prices started to jump last July.
At that time the price for a cubic meter of spruce was 50 euros.
Today it's 90 euros. "
Necker also sees the American market as the main source of price growth.
Demand exploded last summer.
This is also due to the fact that the Canadian forest owners, who otherwise covered the American market, are struggling with the bark beetle and are not delivering enough.
For local forest owners, the wood business is not a gold mine: They earn 40 euros more per cubic meter sold.
“That is not the world.” The real beneficiaries are the sawmills.
The sawmill
There is no shortage of wood, says Matthias Obermaier from the Martin Obermaier sawmill in Irschenberg.
“If a carpenter cannot find wood within the range of his calculated price, then he says there is no wood.
There is enough wood - the price is the problem. ”The shortage is limited to affordable wood.
Obermaier agrees with Necker: “Of course we benefit from the developments on the wood market.” Last summer he received 250 euros per cubic meter of wood, today it is 500 euros - a doubling.
But he has to orientate himself on the market.
"If everyone goes up with the price, but not us, we will have to deal with a flood of inquiries that we simply cannot handle."
The price increase is hardly problematic anyway: "If a roof structure cost 3,000 euros before the price increase and now a house costs 6,000 euros for half a million - that doesn't make the whole thing unaffordable."
In addition, prices have not risen for three decades.
In Upper Bavaria, 75 percent of the works would have stopped because of this.
"Stopping is much more difficult than starting." Many sawmills are family businesses.
If someone closes the business that has been in the family for generations, you can be sure: "He's struggled with the decision for at least ten years."
It is sorely necessary that not only chips, but also some money are wasted when sawing: "Most medium-sized sawmills work with tools from the 1970s." It is time for the sawing industry to earn some money to upgrade to the state of the art.
Meanwhile, Obermaier guarantees: “We deliver to our regular customers just like before.” Nobody needs to worry.
His sawmill does not export to America either.
There is no infrastructure for this.
The carpenter
"It is difficult to get material at the moment," says master carpenter Daniel Kürn from Holzkirchen.
His regular dealers often ran out of goods.
He therefore has to make a lot of phone calls and even go straight to the sawmills.
This also affects the customers: apart from the extended waiting times - seven weeks instead of one - the price of his wood has risen by 50 to 80 percent since December alone.
Kürn reacted.
Because of the price fluctuations, his offers are now only valid for two weeks instead of the previous seven.
“If the wood price throws my calculation over the heap and my clients don't understand, I'll be left with the costs.” Fortunately, he has sensible clients who could be talked about.
Not all carpenters are in this position.
In order to prevent price jumps that threaten the existence of the company, Kürn is now hoping for politics.
It should regulate the wood market: "Now the government has to react: If we run out of resources, then it is not possible for German wood to be sold abroad."
by Moritz Hackl
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