The bakers all over northern Germany want to symbolically let the lights go out on Thursday. In view of the exploding energy prices, they feel let down by politicians in particular. With the campaign they want to draw attention to the fact that without help the existence of many artisan bakers is threatened. “The light is going out for us – today the light and tomorrow the oven?” It says in the call for the campaign, in which no lights should be on in the sales rooms. In the meantime, the sale “of course continues”.
According to the guild, around 800 artisan bakeries with many thousands of sales outlets are organized in the five federal states of Schleswig-Holstein, Hamburg, Bremen, Lower Saxony and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. They represented the medium-sized economy with company sizes from the smallest company to companies with well over 1000 employees. “It is precisely this middle class that is currently threatened in its existence.”
The bakeries feel particularly affected by the enormous increase in energy prices because their production with ovens and cooling systems is particularly energy-intensive. “A sevenfold increase in gas prices and a fourfold increase in electricity prices by 2023 – as experts are currently predicting for medium-sized companies – cannot be offset by the bakeries alone,” they argue. “In about 70 percent of bakeries, gas ovens are in use.”
Because personnel costs have also risen due to the higher minimum wage and the prices for flour and other raw materials have increased significantly, bakeries feel exposed to a “cost tsunami”, according to a paper by the Central Association of German Bakers’ Trades. Accordingly, “the dramatic cost increases can only be passed on to customers to a limited extent because they are in tough price competition with industry”.
The trade sector, which was recognized as systemically important in the corona crisis, is particularly angry that its companies cannot apply for subsidies from the federal energy cost containment program (EKDP). Unlike many other sectors of the economy, they are not on the list of companies eligible for funding. The bakers have been demanding for weeks that admission to the EKDP must be made up for urgently. “It is unacceptable that the production of vermouth or wallpaper, for example, is eligible, but bakeries are excluded.”
A statement by Federal Minister of Economics Robert Habeck (Greens) on the TV talk show “Maischberger” did not exactly have a calming effect on the industry representatives. Habeck had said that he did not expect a wave of bankruptcies in the winter. However, he could “imagine that certain industries would simply stop producing for the time being”, Habeck gave as an example flower shops, organic shops and bakeries as shops that “rely on people spending money”.
“Minister Habeck has upset many medium-sized companies and in particular the bakery trade,” said a statement from the bakers’ association. “A bakery cannot simply close down for three months and then keep going. Bread will not be made up for.”
In a longer statement by the Federal Ministry of Economics, it was said on Wednesday that Habeck wanted to explain that the risk of “silent business closures”, i.e. business closures without filing for bankruptcy, posed a problem for an economy and that the government had to keep an eye on both. “Looking at the insolvencies alone” does not go far enough. For small and medium-sized companies in particular, impending tasks are a “serious problem” due to the high energy costs. The federal government has that on the screen.
The Hamburg Chamber of Commerce had already painted a bleak picture for this winter on Tuesday. In a quick poll by the chamber, 42 percent of the companies say that they see their future at risk at the location. In the manufacturing industry it is even 63 percent. “The time to act is now,” says the President of the Chamber of Commerce, Norbert Aust, with a view to the results of the survey. Hamburg’s economy is “on the way to a serious crisis”, the mood is “dramatic”, the current situation is having a “massive impact on many companies”. Energy prices are currently too high.
