<
https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-energy-bills-germany-brussels-pipeline-prices/>
"ZIMMERN OB ROTTWEIL, Germany — You’ve never heard of Hans Keim Kunststoffe,
but you’ve almost certainly come across one of its products.
They’re protecting museum paintings, covering MRI machines during a hospital
visit, forming a mobile caravan’s sunroof and even hanging over the seats of an
amusement park ride in China.
These plastic parts are all made in a corrugated iron factory ringed with
carefully planted shrubbery on the edge of Zimmern ob Rottweil, a small town
nestled in Germany’s Black Forest region about a half-hour drive from the Swiss
border.
It’s a small but energy-intensive business: The company runs eight ovens that
heat up and mold plastic sheets into whatever the customer requests. The
largest oven is the size of a small room, with enough space to fit several
people doing jumping jacks.
Running those furnaces has gotten a lot more expensive since Russia’s invasion
of Ukraine. Before the war, the annual electricity bill was about €80,000. It's
nearly doubled since then, said managing director Christoph Keim, son of the
company’s founder, a chemist who got his start after World War II with a
company making disinfectants. Prices for customers rose, while profit margins
shrank.
Eventually, costs receded. Relief came. But things didn’t return to their
pre-war level. Instead, Keim entered a troubling new normal, where energy
prices are double those of overseas rivals.
That reality is slowly eroding thousands of similar companies across Europe’s
industrial heartland. Germany, Europe’s manufacturing powerhouse, has fallen
into a recession expected to extend through the year’s end. Even global German
stalwarts like Volkswagen, a name almost synonymous with the mighty
Das Auto
itself, are staring at unprecedented plant closures.
More broadly across the EU, output from key energy-intensive sectors like
chemicals and steel is declining. Plants are shutting down. Industrial
champions are announcing layoffs.
This low-wattage economy has policymakers issuing existential warnings — if
things don’t change, they say, European industry will shrink to irrelevance. On
Monday, Mario Draghi, the EU economic guru and former European Central Bank
chief, offered a similarly dire message, using elevated energy bills to make
his case for a massive overhaul of how Europe does business."
Via Frederick Wilson II.
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
