30 years during which a lot changed

New construction after new construction

At the time, Klausner invested 420 million schillings (around €30.5 million) in Friesau. Adjusted for inflation, that would be €62.4 million today. In 1998, a new production site followed in Wismar and another one in Kodersdorf in 2004. In 2005, he announced the construction of a new sawmill worth millions in Landsberg am Lech. The investment sum was already twice as high as twelve years earlier: €65 million. Since construction did not progress fast enough, Klausner bought Kühne Holz in Adelebsen without further ado and planned to invest €30 million there. This was the straw that would ultimately break the camel’s back.

Too big too fast

KKlausner pushed many things to the limit – which ultimately proved to be his economic undoing. He took advantage of subsidies in the new German federal states like no other. In sales, he bet almost everything on just one market – hoping for enormous opportunities and taking big risks. In purchasing, he was relentless.

Klausner was the catalyst for a structural adjustment, especially in the German sawmill industry. His philosophy was as simple as it was risky: high-performance profiling lines without any flexibility. The produced lumber was dried and planed and shipped to the US. The Holz-Zentralblatt aptly described them as the "sawmills of the Klausner League", a title the management proudly accepted and used themselves.

One group with the output of today’s entire industry

By 2005, the group’s cutting volume had grown rapidly, reaching up to 2.5 million m³ a year. At that time, Klausner alone shipped around 200,000 m³ across the Atlantic each month. In 2023, the entire German sawmill industry will achieve this – with 2 million m³ in ten months.

Klausner was undoubtedly a man who recognized decisive trends, reacted promptly and took advantage of the opportunities – be it the subsidies granted after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the US’s hunger for softwood lumber at the beginning of the noughties or the founding of the Bavarian State Forests in 2005. The latter were looking for a bulk buyer of log wood in order to generate reliable revenue at the start. They found that buyer – but on terms that were only lucrative for Klausner. Unchallenged, the benefit of the "Klausner contracts" was estimated at around €150 million over the term of the contract.

More harm than good

Because of these opportunities, which were not available to anyone else, Klausner's guest appearance in Germany did more harm to the industry than good to anyone.

It is the ultimate irony that:

• the four German sawmills which changed owners between 2015 and 2017 were among the most efficient in Europe in the years that followed: Kodersdorf was acquired by HS Timber, Wismar and Landsberg were purchased by Ilim Timber, and the first production site in Friesau/Saalburg-Ebersdorf is now owned by Mercer Timber Products.
• the US market began to soar to lucrative heights (both owned by Binderholz today) just a few months after the shutdown of Klausner’s two US sawmills.

He did everything right …

Klausner had done everything right by relying on efficient cutting technology and the US market. He was the first to recognize the potential of the US South, even before Canadian companies installed 17 million m³ of production capacity there.

… yet wrong, too

From an entrepreneurial point of view, however, Klausner did everything wrong. With greater market diversification in sales and a more accommodating behavior towards his suppliers, he would probably be one of the most successful sawmillers in Europe in 2023. Klausner himself did not want to give an interview to the Holzkurier. He now lives in Kitzbühel again and is one of the largest forest owners in Tyrol.