Financial Times:

The future of Europe’s gas-reliant chemicals industry — and in particular of BASF’s Ludwigshafen site, the largest integrated chemical plant in the world — is deeply concerning for some industrialists. Ludwigshafen is a key supplier to manufacturers of everything from cars to toothpaste and is the engine of Germany’s chemicals sector.

“If the German chemicals industry goes down, three weeks later every supply chain in Europe has a problem,” says Cefic’s Mensink.

Germany’s dominance in the supply chain with industrial giants such as BASF, means that even companies based elsewhere are exposed to the fallout of any gas rationing in the country.

“If Germany is not able to supply . . . that will have ripple effect all across Europe,” says Saint-Gobain’s d’Iribarne.

German companies, which account for 27 per cent of the bloc’s sold industrial production by value, are on the frontline. At the beginning of this year, more than 50 per cent of Germany’s gas imports came from Russia and industry accounts for just over a third of demand.

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“The costs of gas and electricity . . . pose an existential threat to energy-intensive industries such as the steel industry,” Thyssenkrupp says.

Other countries may not have Germany’s industrial heft, but their economies — and employment — are even more reliant on manufacturing. The OECD estimates that Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Austria Slovenia, Sweden, Finland and northern Italy have the highest shares of employment in vulnerable gas-intensive sectors.

All these countries are scrambling to offer support to their industries and citizens as the weather grows chillier and energy demand rises. But many companies are already looking beyond this winter to the next, and predicting even tougher conditions.