immo!nvest – Die Plattform für Standorte und Immobilien

Tag: Branche

  • Wave of bankruptcies continues in 2024

    Wave of bankruptcies continues in 2024

    In 2024, 23 companies had to file for bankruptcy every day. That’s around 5500 by August. Forecasts predict more than 8,000 insolvencies by the end of the year, which corresponds to an increase of over 12 per cent compared to previous years. What is particularly striking is that the bankruptcy figures are almost a third higher than in the pre-corona years of 2018 and 2019. However, it is not only the official insolvencies that are causing concern, but also cases in which claims are written off without bankruptcy proceedings being initiated.

    Abusive bankruptcies and challenges
    The statistics also reveal abusive bankruptcies in which controlling bodies such as boards of directors evade their responsibilities or deliberately bring about insolvency in order to secure unlawfully generated profits. In addition, the prospect of a bankruptcy dividend remains sobering for creditors. In 58 per cent of cases, there are insufficient assets, while 40 per cent of proceedings are concluded summarily.

    Affected sectors and prominent cases
    The mechanical engineering and metal industries are particularly hard hit. Traditional companies such as the Kreuzlingen-based metal construction company Neuweiler and Marton AG from Flawil had to file for insolvency in 2024. The reasons include high energy prices, material shortages and weakening demand in international markets. The bankruptcies not only cause financial damage, but also social damage, as many employees lose their jobs.

    Credit checks as a protective measure
    In view of the ongoing uncertainties, it is advisable to check the creditworthiness of business partners, including existing customers, every time a business transaction is concluded. Tools offer quick insights to minimise risks and, in case of doubt, to opt for advance payment. Although losses can never be completely avoided, a solid credit check can make them calculable.

    Start-up boom and young companies at risk
    In parallel to the wave of bankruptcies, there is a start-up boom. In 2024, around 53,000 new companies were entered in the commercial register. However, young companies are particularly susceptible to insolvency in the first five years. Covid-19 after-effects in particular, such as outstanding bridging loans, increase the risk for many of these companies.

    Difficult framework conditions
    Recession fears among trading partners such as Germany and Austria, the strong Swiss franc and geopolitical conflicts are further complicating matters. In Switzerland, overregulation and outstanding government debt are a burden for many companies. However, the introduction of mandatory bankruptcy proceedings for state claims from January 2025 could lead to a market shakeout by weeding out so-called zombie companies.

  • New school toilets to transform Sri Lanka’s construction industry

    New school toilets to transform Sri Lanka’s construction industry

    Paolo Tombesi, the director of the Laboratory of Construction and Architecture(FAR) at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne(EPFL), and visiting scientist Milinda Pathiraja have completed a groundbreaking construction project at its old high school in Kandy in central Sri Lanka: The construction of two toilet facilities is designed to demonstrate industrial development potential through architectural design. Their prototype is based on 20 years of joint research.

    With strategic planning, the design of such infrastructures “can be used as an opportunity to showcase and disseminate innovations and introduce practice-based triggers for a much-needed revitalisation of local building culture”, Pathiraja is quoted as saying in an EPFL report. It was also about “cultivating new, economically sustainable and ecologically oriented building ‘traditions’ for countries facing urbanisation pressures, limited raw materials and financial constraints”.

    For example, non-sustainable building materials that require functioning supply chains, such as glass and aluminium, or are not available in the country, such as clinker, were avoided. The two researchers also wanted to illustrate how building policy and sustainability lead to value creation at different points, for example in the case of vaulted roofs made of ferrocement.

    For all this, the industry needs concrete examples and prototypes “that show both the technical value and the economic feasibility of such ideas”, says Tombesi. These toilets simultaneously lower the total cost to $400 per square metre, including sanitation. “And given the nationwide need for this type of programme, the lessons we’ve learned will likely be picked up by others.”

  • Milestone of transparency on greenhouse gas emissions of the real estate industry

    Milestone of transparency on greenhouse gas emissions of the real estate industry

    With a share of 23.9%, real estate is the third largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in Switzerland after transport and industry. There is therefore no way around sustainable real estate to achieve the net-zero climate targets. However, you can’t tell by looking at real estate whether it is environmentally friendly or not. Labels and ratings were therefore created early on to provide information about the sustainability of real estate.

    Comparability is central
    What initially contributed a lot to the promotion and better understanding of the sustainability of real estate has meanwhile become a problem itself. The variety of labels and initiatives in the sustainability field overwhelms many market participants. Moreover, the individual ratings can hardly be compared with each other. Some ratings include several dozen indicators, so that in the end it is no longer clear what they are trying to express at all. Moreover, many investment vehicles in the real estate sector are now labelled as sustainable and apply ESG criteria, but there is no clarity as to how sustainable the respective properties are.

    The trend is towards disclosure of environmental indicators
    However, investors are demanding increasingly precise information and want to be able to compare different investment products not only in terms of returns or risks, but also in terms of sustainability. The trend today is therefore towards direct disclosure of environmental indicators, such as energy consumption or greenhouse gas emissions. Last year, the AMAS and KGAST associations obliged or requested their members to publish the most important key figures in the annual reports of real estate funds and real estate investment foundations with a closing date from the end of 2023.

    Why do we need a standard?
    However, calculating these key figures is anything but simple. Different values can result for the same properties, depending on the calculation method. Standardisation is therefore necessary. REIDA has taken on this task and developed a standard for determining the most important environmentally relevant key figures in the real estate sector. According to this REIDA standard, a benchmarking was carried out in 2022 with 3984 existing properties or 36 property portfolios, which have a total of almost 23 million m2 of energy reference area.

    What was measured?
    Only consumption values measured in real terms were recorded and balanced. This is a big difference to other surveys, where in many cases no consumption data is available and which therefore mostly operate with calculated values (estimates based on benchmarks). For each of the real estate portfolios, the degree of coverage is also shown together with the results. This describes the proportion of properties in the portfolio for which measured energy consumption data are available. On average, the coverage rate for all 36 portfolios is 83.1%. The disclosure of the degree of coverage also serves transparency, but is still not widespread. An analysis of the annual reports of listed real estate funds by pom+Consulting in 2022, for example, showed that only 25% of them contained quantitative information on the degree of coverage.

    Benchmarking results and their classification
    The average energy consumption in the REIDA benchmarking portfolio is 97.4 kWh per m² of energy reference area. The range is between 59 and 146 kWh/m². Special situations are probably responsible for portfolios at the lower end of the values – e.g. that single tenants purchase a lot of energy themselves, which according to the current methodology is not yet taken into account in the energy indicator. In an online survey by the University of Lausanne, which analysed 66 portfolios of institutional investors with a good 31 million m² of building space, a somewhat higher value of 105.5 kWh/m² of energy reference area was reported for the reference year 2020 – but without using a uniform calculation methodology.

    The share of renewable energy in the REIDA CO2 benchmarking is 25.8% on average, with a range of 13% to 54%. On average, the greenhouse gas emissions of the portfolios that participated in the REIDA benchmarking amount to 13.1 kg CO2 equivalents per m² energy reference area. In addition to carbon dioxide, the benchmarking also takes into account all other greenhouse gases, such as methane or nitrous oxide, and calculates CO2 equivalents (CO2e) from them. The REIDA portfolio 2022 thus achieves a very good value – with a range between 4.1 and 22.4 kg CO2e/m². The sample surveyed by the University of Lausanne achieved an average value of 19.6 kg CO2e/m². Again, due to the lack of a uniform calculation method, a direct comparison is only possible with reservations.

    Specification of uncertainty ranges
    Another achievement of the REIDA benchmarking is the specification of uncertainty ranges. This is because the consumption and emission values used as well as the calculations are always subject to uncertainties (e.g. inaccurate measurement sensors, small conversion uncertainties from lettable area to energy reference area). These uncertainties are aggregated for each portfolio and shown at the level of the key figures in the form of an uncertainty range, which indicates how reliable the key figure is. The uncertainty range is given as twice the standard deviation, which means that the actual value lies within the specified uncertainty range with a probability of 95%. For the indicator of CO2e emission intensity, the individual portfolios show uncertainty ranges from 0.3 to 5.8 kg CO2e/m².

    New standard for ESG reporting in Switzerland
    With the CO2 benchmarking, REIDA sets a new standard and thereby achieves a milestone in the ESG reporting of real estate in Switzerland. The standard will not only be continuously improved in terms of methodology and data quality, but will also cover aspects of environmental sustainability that have so far been excluded. One of the most important tasks will be to cover not only the operating phase of real estate, but also its entire life cycle, and in particular to incorporate the issue of grey energy. The addition of ratings and certificates – which have limits in terms of transparency and comparability – as well as the transition to direct reporting of the actual key performance indicators are thus in full swing.

  • Material prices dampen growth in the construction industry

    Material prices dampen growth in the construction industry

    More is being built in Switzerland again: In the second quarter of 2022, sales in the main construction trades rose by around 6 percent year-on-year to CHF 6.1 billion. Incoming orders meanwhile increased by 12 percent to 6.4 billion Swiss francs. The figures come from the current construction index of Credit Suisse and the Swiss Builders' Association ( SBV ).

    However, according to the report, the growth will be put into perspective by the “sharp price increases” for many building materials and a “significant increase” in energy and transport costs. For example, the prices of probation bars have risen by 87 percent and those of plastic pipes by 19 percent compared to the same quarter of the previous year. Meanwhile, diesel was around 45 percent more expensive in the second quarter of 2022 than a year ago.

    Because sales have risen less than costs, the already low profit margin of 2 to 3 percent has now fallen even further, according to the report. In addition, the SBV expects the Swiss National Bank to raise interest rates further by the end of the year. As a result, sales in the main construction trades are likely to grow more slowly in the medium to long term. In the short term, the report assumes an 8.9 percent increase in sales in the third quarter of 2022 compared to the same quarter in the previous year.

  • Daiwa House Modular Europe names four trends that will be essential for the real estate industry in 2022

    Daiwa House Modular Europe names four trends that will be essential for the real estate industry in 2022

    Global scarcity of resources
    The prices of many building materials are currently skyrocketing. This will not change this year either – insulating materials, steel, everything will become more expensive and scarce. Construction prices are rising accordingly and threaten to make many projects unprofitable. In addition, the emerging countries in particular are currently asking for a lot of material and are buying the market empty. So the situation will continue to worsen. In the long term, only improved project planning with a greater focus on reusability can help, because circular economy and resource protection already begin in the planning phase. If entire buildings, parts of buildings and building materials can be recycled or found a subsequent use, this not only reduces the material requirement, but also contributes to greater sustainability at the same time. It is important to think big about Cradle to Cradle in the future.

    Sustainability not only through energy savings in the usage phase
    The German construction industry in particular has an urgent need to catch up when it comes to sustainability. In the Netherlands there is already a CO 2 cap per square meter of new construction. With the new government with green participation, it is quite conceivable that such a cap will also become the new guideline in Germany. In addition, disposal costs will remain a major issue and will increase proportionately. Due to the still immature framework conditions for recycling processes and the low landfill capacities, waste is becoming a further driver of construction costs. This shows how important it will be in the future to use building materials and building parts for a long time and to reuse them later – as is already possible in modular construction by refurbishing reused modules. The circular economy should therefore be the focus of the project early on in the planning.

    Digitization and AI also in construction
    In order to increase sustainability across the entire industry and to counteract the scarcity of resources, both planning and production must be optimized. Both must become more intelligent overall and network. The use of “artificial intelligence” is ideal for this. It supports construction projects, for example, through generative design, proactive problem detection and the avoidance of delays and cost overruns. But it also has to be used in production. An example: Digitizing the cut leads to less offcuts and waste. Thanks to good advance planning and the use of an AI, the remaining material from a cut can be used for further use in other future projects. This not only saves material, but also additional work steps and thus increases the efficiency of the entire production process. After all, residual materials are also resources.

    Industrialized manufacturing as in the automotive industry
    The advance of digitization within the construction industry also enables the use of semi- or fully automated processes. They reduce sources of error and make production more efficient. Affordable living space can be optimally realized with robot-supported construction processes in connection with the necessary digital management of the construction data – from planning to construction site. In view of the acute shortage of skilled workers, which will not be solved in the next few years, this development is the logical consequence. Daiwa House Modular Europe will also rely on automated processes in the already planned German gigafactory.

    These four trends should encourage the construction industry to rethink. In addition, there are a number of other changes such as a generational change in the ranks of managers as well as political and social change. Builders are now open to standardized building solutions. Modularly planned and built buildings offer a short construction time and high quality thanks to around 90 percent prefabrication in the factory. In the residential, care, hotel and education segments in particular, there are similar needs despite the different locations – so not every building has to be a prototype.

  • «In our professions we have to manage the balancing act between tradition and modernity and turn this into a strength»

    «In our professions we have to manage the balancing act between tradition and modernity and turn this into a strength»

    At the beginning of February, Silvia Fleury, a new director, took over the management of the Swiss Association of Painters and Plasterers. In future, the Aargau native will be at the forefront of representing the professional interests of around 1,900 member companies with almost 10,000 employees throughout Switzerland. In her job, she wants to focus on continuity: “The association is on the right track. I will continue what has proven its worth,” explains Fleury. "But of course the industry is also confronted with challenges that we will tackle together with the regional associations, with our members and with everyone interested in the industry." As examples, she cites the shortage of skilled workers, wage dumping and digitization.

    Combine craftsmanship and digitization profitably
    Fleury intends to pay particular attention to digitization over the next few years: "Craft and digitization are not mutually exclusive, on the contrary," she is convinced. There are enough examples that show that the balancing act between tradition and modernity is possible and that digital tools used in a targeted manner can also strengthen and advance craft trades and businesses. "It is important that we do not stop at the companies, but that digitization is also promoted in training and further education as well as in the association itself." Digitization is a sign of modern work execution and thus an important argument for young people and parents alike when choosing a career. Especially in times of an ever-increasing shortage of skilled workers, this is becoming more and more important in order to be able to recruit the best junior staff. Combined with craftsmanship, which will remain central in the future, painting and plastering jobs can offer young people varied, modern and future-oriented work. Fleury sees her task in this process as "leading the way, initiating the discussion and pointing out opportunities, but also risks, so that we can all benefit as best as possible from the great possibilities of digitization."

    Well known and networked in the industry
    Silvia Fleury is well known and well connected within the association and the industry. As head of the central services, she was responsible for the entire association administration for 13 years and knows the SMGV from the ground up. "With Silvia Fleury, the Board of Directors has been able to win its preferred candidate for the demanding position of Director," says SMGV Central President Mario Freda. “She knows the strengths, challenges and processes of the association very well. At the same time, she has the professional and human qualities that are necessary to successfully lead the SMGV into the future. We look forward to walking this path with her and tackling the upcoming challenges together.”