The Federal Association of Goods Transport and Logistics (BGL) has complained about a dramatic shortage of the exhaust gas cleaning agent Adblue and has therefore warned of supply bottlenecks in Germany.
The Adblue manufacturer SKW nitrogen works Piesteritz in Wittenberg stopped production two weeks ago because of the gas crisis.
The diesel cleaner is needed to separate harmful nitrogen oxides into harmless hydrogen and nitrogen.
The company is one of the major German fertilizer manufacturers and had to shut down its ammonia plant due to high gas prices.
A company spokesman said a few days ago that the company would lose as much in a month as it makes in profit in a year.
SKW is now planning short-time work from October.
“No Adblue means no trucks.
And that means no supply for Germany," said BGL general manager Dirk Engelhardt on Wednesday of the "Bild" newspaper.
He accused Federal Minister of Economics Robert Habeck (Greens) of driving “Germany with one eye to the wall”.
Adblue production still requires a lot of gas at the moment.
SKW is expected to have to pay a gas surcharge of EUR 30 million per month.
The spokesman said it was not financially feasible.
If SKW does not produce, goods traffic will also stop on the road.
Almost every truck in the forwarding, logistics and transport industry in Germany runs on diesel.
SKW belongs to the Prague group Agrofert.
Engelhardt warned that the first bottlenecks in retail could occur in as little as two weeks.
He called on the federal government to initiate a "logistics round table".
Adblue is urea, which catalytic converters for diesel engines need in order to split harmful nitrogen oxides from the exhaust gases into harmless hydrogen and nitrogen.