The prefabricated house manufacturer Baufritz is getting through the crisis better than many in the construction industry. The family business focuses on ecological houses – and a target group that can afford them.
Anyone who visits the Baufritz workshop on the edge of the Allgäu town of Erkheim is treated to a spectacle for all the senses: entire house walls, roofs and floors hang from the ceiling on thick steel cables. A craftsman with hearing protection is currently driving a frame made of wooden beams through a nailing machine. Every millisecond, the machine shoots dozens of metal pins through the insulation paper on the frame and into the wood. The sound of a milling machine mingles with the loud shots; it smells of spicy spruce wood. A few steps further, the resulting cavities are filled with kilos of wood shavings.
Baufritz builds more than 200 prefabricated houses every year on 18,000 square meters of factory space. Managing director Dagmar Fritz-Kramer smiles contentedly as she trudges through the sawdust on the floor of her production halls. “Sup’r,” she comments, using Allgäu language, on everything she sees on the way along the production line. “Sup’r” is also doing business – and this in the biggest crisis in the construction industry in three decades.
Source: Stern
