Poul Norup surveys trees at a farm in Skjoeldenaesholm, eastern Denmark, earlier this month.

Poul Norup smiles broadly as he supervises a final shipment of Christmas trees to Germany: every last one of his Nordmann evergreens has been sold, and at a higherthan-usual price.

The muscular, blond ranger says he is still being flooded with calls from “foreign buyers eager to buy Danish Christmas trees, the most sought-after in the world” but “we have nothing left.”

“They will have to wait for the saplings to grow a bit more,” he said, squinting through the haze at the endless hilly fields of young firs.

Denmark is the world’s leading exporter of Nordmanns, considered the Rolls Royce of evergreens, selling some nine million trees last year alone, primarily to Germany, Britain and France.

The tree, which takes around a decade to grow, is revered for its elegant symmetry, its dense, emerald green branches and its soft, long-lasting needles.

As other industries scramble to slash prices and cut staff to face slipping demand amid the global financial turmoil, Denmark is for the second year facing a shortage of its coveted Nordmanns, Norup says, stroking the branches of a nearby fir.

He attributes the success of the Danish Nordmann, with its “harmonious lines” and which “can go weeks without dropping its needles,” to “Denmark’s very favorable climate that allows it to flourish, the nutritious soil and the know-how.”

Norup knows each of the thousands of saplings that cover 1,200 hectares of land in Skjoeldnaesholm, some 60 kilometers west of Copenhagen.

He and his workers closely monitor the trees’ “health,” and thus their ability to secure a good profit, with each fir this year expected to bring in a profit of between 20 and 30 kroner (US$3.5-5.2).

Importers this year are meanwhile dishing out 90 kroner before tax for a two-meter tree, “which is 15 percent more than in 2007. This is the general tendency,” Norup said.

The street price for a Nordmann that size, which will become the focus of holiday cheer in many living rooms, is this year expected to be about 350 kroner in Denmark, while bigger trees will cost much more.

This year is no exception

The industry is definitely not feeling the sting of the crisis, says Kaj Oestergaard, who heads up the Danish Christmas tree growers’ association.

“Crisis or no crisis, the demand from importers is as strong as in the past, and is even greater than the supply available due to the smaller number of trees for sale,” he said.

Like in 2007, there will be a shortage “this year again of some 300,000 Nordmanns,” he warns.

The scarcity can be traced back to the crisis years between 1998 and 2004, when there was an over-production of

Christmas trees across Europe, leading to price wars that forced many producers out of business and pushed others to suspend their planting activities.

“It takes between eight and 10 years for a fir tree to reach a sellable size, so the conclusion is obvious,” said Claus Christensen, a senior consultant for the association.

The Scandinavian country’s 3,500 producers are this year expected to pocket about the same amount as in 2007, when an acute shortage of

Nordmanns was also widely felt and total sales ticked in at around 1.4 billion kroner (roughly $261 million).

Source: AFP