If ammonia is missing, then fertilizers are missing, then Adblue is missing, then nitric acid is missing, then an almost endless bar of additives for glue, resin, melanin, metal coatings, coolants are missing.
And as if that weren't enough, brewers, mineral water producers, slaughterhouses and food producers are now sounding the alarm.
They lack carbon dioxide, a key waste product of ammonia production.
Bernd Freytag
Business correspondent Rhein-Neckar-Saar based in Mainz.
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Tillman Neuscheler
Editor in Business.
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No chemical requires more natural gas for production – gas accounts for 90 percent of the variable costs here.
Due to the enormous price increase, a large part of the European ammonia producers have shut down their operations, which is fueling price increases globally.
And this is already having serious consequences.
The European fertilizer manufacturers are in their greatest crisis, farmers fear significantly increasing costs for food production, the transport industry is warning of an Adblue bottleneck.
The Federal Association of the German Food Industries is now warning of a "cascade effect" due to the lack of carbon dioxide.
The development is "worrying".
Carbon dioxide is required, for example, for the packaging of fresh food, also for the bottling of beverages such as mineral water, lemonades and beer and also for stunning animals in slaughterhouses.
Carbon dioxide is also used in vegetable cultivation to enrich the air in the greenhouses so that the plants grow faster and become more resilient.
"Since the beginning of August we have not been supplied," complains vegetable farmer Thomas Albers from Papenburg.
This step came without warning from the supplier, from one day to the next.
His plants would already be limp: "We expect a production loss of around 20 percent."
Protective gas for food
In the food industry, the colorless and tasteless carbon dioxide is mainly used as a protective gas to extend the shelf life of the packaged food.
The shielding gas – usually a mixture of carbon dioxide and nitrogen, but sometimes argon, hydrogen or helium – protects under the plastic wrap of packaged food by displacing oxygen, thereby preventing oxidation and the growth of microbes.
But beverage manufacturers also need carbon dioxide, for example to add carbon dioxide to mineral water and lemonades so that they bubble pleasantly.
"CO2 for carbon dioxide is currently scarcer than ever," says Jürgen Reichle, Managing Director of the Association of German Mineral Springs: "Only 30 to 40 percent of the usual delivery quantities are currently available on the market."
Many suppliers could not fulfill their promised delivery obligations and refer to "force majeure".
A few mineral springs have already had to stop bottling for a short time.
Around 70 percent of the mineral water sold in Germany contains carbonic acid, but only a small part of it naturally contains enough carbonic acid from the source, and the water usually has to be enriched with additional carbonic acid.
Around 30 percent is currently sold as still water.