The rescuer wears worry lines. Private banker Jörg Woltmann (75), who saved Berlin’s Königliche Porzellan-Manufaktur (KPM) from bankruptcy almost two decades ago, has restless nights again. Gas fear robs the entrepreneur of his sleep!
Its four kilns swallow as much gas as 100 single-family houses in a year. Converting to electricity is not possible, then the fragile luxury item would get a yellow tinge. Only with gas are the plates, vases and figures perfect in the pre-firing (1000 degrees) and second firing (1400 degrees) in 20 hours each.
His concern: The energy costs of 600,000 euros/year will increase by 20 to 30 percent.
“The question is whether customers will accept higher prices,” says Woltmann. And also whether he will go away empty-handed again, as in the pandemic: “In contrast to Meissen in Saxony, we did not receive any help.”
The second major concern: a possible delivery stop for Russian natural gas. In order to fill the warehouse with goods again after months of short-time work for the Easter business, KPM reintroduced voluntary Saturday work over a period of several weeks.
For example, machine setter Andreas Kessler (60) worked six hours on a plate cycle line, and later gets eight hours of free time in lieu. The KPMler (for 32 years): “We produce, you don’t know what’s coming.”
If gas has to be rationed, the question is how Berlin’s oldest company, which Frederick the Great made purveyor to the court, will be classified by the authorities. As a critical infrastructure that is to be supplied with priority? “I’m not assuming that,” says Woltmann soberly. That would mean at least short-time work again.
“If production were stopped, the goods would last for a maximum of nine months for specialist retailers and our own branches,” says Managing Director Martina Hacker (60). Despite working on Saturdays.
