Exploding energy and raw material prices, disrupted supply chains, shortage of skilled workers: Small and medium-sized companies in particular are facing major challenges. In our new series “Strong through the crisis”, we explore how craftsmen, company owners and company bosses are adapting to the current problems. To start: Olaf Höhn, owner of Florida Eis.
The head of “Florida Eis” is worried regarding the future. However, he accepts the current situation as an entrepreneurial challenge.
Neatly invested
Olaf Höhn just had to climb onto the roof himself. In tow he had two handfuls of curious people who were interested in the photovoltaic systems on the Florida Eis company premises in Staaken.
And not just for that. Höhn’s latest energy coup also caused astonishment among them: Höhn had the very latest air conditioning technology made in Japan installed for 480,000 euros. “This saves me easily 20 percent of electricity when cooling,” says Berlin’s most successful ice cream maker. Olaf Höhn has invested around 1.5 million euros in the past twelve months alone in order to produce even more energy-efficiently and environmentally friendly.
“This is not a crisis, this is a situation!”
Of course, Olaf Höhn is worried. As an entrepreneur who is responsible for around 150 employees, he has to. And so he has to live with the fact that the prices for sugar (“We need 450 tons of that per year”), cocoa and other important raw materials for ice cream production have risen by up to 100 percent. And his main
energy provider terminated and the prospect of serious price increases.
“There are difficult negotiations ahead,” suspects Olaf Höhn, but he still says: “It’s not a crisis, it’s a situation!” writes numbers. “But for that,” says the 73-year-old, “you have to do your homework and have a vision that costs money and doesn’t immediately pay off.”
Greatest possible climate friendliness
An example: When Höhn was faced with the choice of automating his ice cream production or continuing to rely on labour-intensive manual work, he decided on the latter. In times of high energy prices, far fewer machines and devices have to be supplied with electricity in Staaken than at other producers. But what is now beginning to pay off is Höhn’s striving for the greatest possible climate friendliness and the move away from fossil fuels.
This includes so-called adsorption chillers (they convert the waste heat from compressors into cold) as well as the special fine dust filter for pellet heating, the switch to e-mobility or the development of new types of packaging made of bamboo.
Text: Ulf Teichert
