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The stove stays off: an expert explains why firewood is becoming a luxury item

2022-07-09T05:18:40.690Z


The stove stays off: an expert explains why firewood is becoming a luxury item Created: 07/09/2022 07:07 By: Patricia Kania Can hardly save themselves from inquiries: Eva and Benno Maier sometimes get over 100 calls a day to order firewood. Now they had to pull the emergency brake. © Private Firewood is becoming scarce - and more and more expensive. In an interview, woodworker Benno Maier from


The stove stays off: an expert explains why firewood is becoming a luxury item

Created: 07/09/2022 07:07

By: Patricia Kania

Can hardly save themselves from inquiries: Eva and Benno Maier sometimes get over 100 calls a day to order firewood.

Now they had to pull the emergency brake.

© Private

Firewood is becoming scarce - and more and more expensive.

In an interview, woodworker Benno Maier from Hohenbrunn talks about the background and customer fears.

Hohenbrunn – The timber farmers in the district are blank.

There is nowhere else to buy firewood.

In addition, prices are skyrocketing.

Firewood becomes a luxury good.

Wood farmer Benno Maier (51) from Hohenbrunn has been offering regional firewood from his own and local forests for many years.

He has never experienced such high demand as this year.

In the meantime, the wood has also been sold out.

Nevertheless, he cannot save himself from inquiries.

"Please do not call us," says his homepage.

In an interview with the Munich newspaper, Benno Maier explains why firewood has become a rare commodity, why prices are rising and how he personally assesses the development.

Mr. Maier, why don't you have any more firewood?

That was close last year.

And this time people have already ordered large amounts of wood in the spring for fear that they will not get anything else.

That's totally atypical.

Normally we don't start taking orders before autumn.

Now I have over 100 calls some days.

And people aren't always friendly when they hear there's nothing left.

Many even panic and are afraid that they will have to freeze in winter.

I can understand that, but I'm also not responsible for the fact that everyone can heat in the end.

I can hardly keep up anymore, I've even sold wood that hasn't even dried yet.

It's getting to the point even for me, so I had to pull the emergency brake and stop accepting any more requests for the time being.

Why can't you just offer more wood when demand increases?

It's not that simple.

For me, the quantities have even decreased by a third.

This has to do with the drying of the wood.

I used to be able to dry my wood in the biogas plant in Kirchstockach.

However, the plant was taken out of service.

Now I have to drive 35 kilometers to the next drying facility.

This means that I have a much greater effort and also costs because of the further way.

In addition, not only wood is dried in the plant, but also grain, for example.

And I'm only doing this as a sideline, I still have a whole farm that I have to take care of.

Does that mean that your costs and thus the prices for the wood are correspondingly higher?

My production costs have of course also increased with the higher energy costs.

I need diesel to drive to the drying plant, my splitting machines run on electricity.

I had to adjust the selling price accordingly.

A star of wood now costs me 150 euros, last year it was 115 euros.

I could even charge twice as much and people would buy it out of fear.

But I don't want to take advantage of that.

The prices for firewood are rising, those for industrial wood are falling.

How does that fit together?

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Firewood is not comparable to industrial wood.

Energy wood is a niche all of its own.

Apart from that, the prices for industrial wood have risen massively in recent years and are now going down again.

While the price of firewood has remained relatively stable.

So it's not true that industrial wood has always been cheap and is now getting even cheaper.

When do you think that will change again?

I am convinced that this will remain the case for the next five years.

Times have just changed.

People are being ripped out of their affluence and are now feeling the consequences.

You mean that we are too spoiled that everything has to be available at all times?

First that and then the attitude that everything has to be cheap.

Imports of cheap wood from Eastern Europe have destroyed our market here in recent years.

Many timber farmers have stopped because it just wasn't profitable anymore.

Now there are no imports from these countries because they are crisis areas, like the Ukraine, or because energy costs are skyrocketing there.

In Romania, for example, a liter of diesel now costs three euros.

It's no longer worth sending out the trucks.

We are now feeling the consequences of this global dependency: the firewood market is only half covered.

Do you still have hope?

My only hope is that people's awareness will change again as a result of this situation.

That one returns to the basics from the excess and from "everything-must-be-cheap".

That you are grateful when you have a roof over your head and enough to eat and are healthy.

That you don't have to go on vacation four times a year to make life worth living.

And that people appreciate regionality and local products more again.

More news from Hohenbrunn and the district of Munich can be found here.

Source: merkur

All news articles on 2022-07-09

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