After an increase of 6.0% in sales revenue to €8.300bn for 2020, the German timber-construction association within the umbrella association of the German building trade (ZDB) is expecting to see a slowing in the growth of sales revenue for 2021. According to the status report “Lagebericht 2021” published on 17 June, the association is anticipating an increase of 3.5% this year to what will then be €8.600bn. For weeks now, the increase in purchasing prices for sawnwood and timber-construction products in particular as well as occasional bottlenecks in supply have been causing businesses major costing and predictability problems. In spite of a continuing brisk pace of economic activity in the timber-construction sector, the business prospects are turning out to be more subdued than a few months ago. As in early 2020, the latest survey, performed amongst 470 businesses and thus significantly more than last year, also shows that laborious and bureaucratic authorisation procedures are rated as the biggest obstacles to growth in timber construction. The item of inadequate numbers of skilled labour and employees meanwhile takes second place, and new at third place are problems connected with digitalisation. As such, businesses are faced with the problem that although construction and assembly software have already become standard, entire work processes must be digitalised in the meantime.
Last year, the association counted 11,864 businesses with a total of 71,561 employees. As such, each business had an average of 6 employees. By size, in 2019, the majority of the businesses, 58%, had 1-4 employees, followed by companies with 5-9 employees at roughly 25% and those with 10-19 employees at 14%. Companies with more than 20 employees only accounted for 4% of the total. Businesses with 10-19 employees had the highest proportion of employees in the industry in 2020 at 22,260, accounting for a share of almost 32%.
