That leaves companies, and the wider economy, exposed.
"Rising electricity and gas prices threaten to crush the economy," said Siegfried Russwurm, president of Germany's BDI industry association and chairman of Thyssenkrupp (TKAG.DE), which has warned it might have to introduce shorter working hours as soon as next week.
This, he said, raised the risk of companies considering moving production abroad to save costs.
Germany's engineering and chemicals associations, the country's second- and third-largest industry groups, have halved or scrapped their growth outlooks for this year in response to higher costs and supply chain issues.
German soda and natron maker Ciech Soda Deutschland, a unit of Poland's Ciech SA (CIEP.WA) which supplies glassworks as well as the pharma and automotive industries, is another stalwart of the Mittelstand suffering.
With additional gas costs of 22 million euros per month, it is bleeding money and may be forced to stop production, the economy minister of Saxony-Anhalt, the German state where Ciech Soda is based, warned in a recent letter seen by Reuters.
That would hurt nearby businesses that rely on its products, minister Sven Schulze wrote in the letter to German economy minister Robert Habeck, pleading for an emergency meeting to discuss the matter.
Ciech Soda Deutschland and the economy ministry declined to comment.
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