July 24, 2023
Source: Energy & Management Powernews
According to the Agricultural Commodities and Energy Network, 12 percent of companies in the renewable resources sector posted declining sales - albeit starting from a high level.
A "massive collapse" of the Konjuktur in the industries concerned with renewable raw materials reports the Central Agricultural Raw Materials Marketing and Energy Network (Carmen), based in Straubing (Bavaria). According to its economic survey published on July 18, 12 percent of the relevant companies recorded falling sales, compared with just 1 percent last fall. This is the "highest value since 2016," Carmen warns.
Farther, about 19 percent of companies increased their sales by more than 10 percent in spring 2023. By comparison, that figure had been twice as high in spring 2022, at 38 percent. After all, this development is "still taking place at a high level." Carmen has been regularly surveying more than 3,000 companies in the solid biomass fuels, biogas, biogenic fuels and material use of biomass sectors since 2010 with regard to their sales, their willingness to invest and their staff and order levels. Both the current situation and estimates for the future are surveyed.
According to Carmen, the situation with regard to investments was less dramatic: Some 72 percent of companies said they had invested at least as much in the spring of this year as in the same period in 2022, but 21 percent reported they had foregone investment. Since spring 2022, that figure has more than doubled and is "the highest it's been since fall 2015," according to Carmen. So far, the impact of the situation on staffing levels has remained low. "Still, the share of firms that have added employees is more than four times that of firms that have reduced staff on balance sheet," Carmen notes.
Declines on the horizon
As for the outlook going forward, about 36 percent of firms expect sales to decline, nearly double the 19 percent who did so in fall 2022. The percentage of firms fearing a sales decline of more than 10 percent is 14 percent, triple the fall 2022 figure (5 percent). According to Carmen, "The last time these numbers were higher was mid-2015." Down only slightly to 29 percent and "still at a gratifyingly high level," according to the network, is the percentage of companies planning to invest less than in 2022. No longer planning to invest is 22 percent of companies, more than double the number who did so last fall (9 percent).
After all, as far as personnel is concerned, 32 percent of companies intend to hire new employees. In contrast, only 9 percent want to cut jobs.
In free fall
As before, Carmen sees the assessment of the political framework conditions "in free fall and not far from the all-time low in 2014." Some 68 percent of companies consider these to be poor; in 2014, this figure had hardly been higher at 69 percent. In the fall of 2022, it was 58 percent. The general conditions are rated as good by 11 percent of the companies, the same number as last fall.
According to Carmen, this is not surprising, "because the problem areas that have existed since 2022 have not gone away; on the contrary, more have been added." The building energy law (GEG) has not yet been passed, she said. The implementation of the third EU directive regarding renewable energies (RED III) is also imminent, he said. And "there are already indications that the use of (cultivated) biomass for energy in particular will be further restricted and that resources for material use will also become scarcer."
Author: Klaus Fischer
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