A scandal involving contaminated animal feed leaves German consumers skeptical – By Heike Holdinghausen

A supermarket in Potsdam, capital of the German federal state of Brandenburg, in January. The shelves were stocked with specialties from around the world. But the shelf where the eggs usually sit was empty. There were no eggs. And it wasn’t an isolated incident.

A dioxin scandal has been dominating the news in Germany since the beginning of the year, shaking consumer confidence in the safety of food. Grocers around the country temporarily removed conventionally produced eggs from the shelves, and the organic competition quickly sold out.

Pork prices also plummeted. The Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR) gave the all-clear signal at the end of the month. It reported that dioxin levels in eggs and pork were never so high as to represent a risk to consumers’ health. “There is no need to worry, people can continue eating all these products,” said BfR President Andreas Hensel. So was it just all media hype and hypersensitive consumers? Hardly.

How Germany’s solar industry is facing up to its Chinese rivals – By Wolfgang Mulke

Bayern Munich is a shining star in the German football firmament. That makes the internationally renowned team an interesting partner for Yingli Green Energy, the second-biggest Chinese manufacturer of solar panels. “The club is a very successful performer, and not just in Germany,” said company vice president Jason Liu, praising the Munich club. As one of Bayern’s new sponsors, Yingli aims to profit from the team’s reputation by winning German homebuilders as customers for their solar panels.

So far, Chinese companies have largely competed on price with the powerful German solar industry to attract customers. The consequences of the price dumping can be seen on the stock market. A few years ago, a share in German solar module manufacturer Q-Cells cost investors nearly €80. Today the price has plummeted to below €3. Pricing pressure and the sharp increase in worldwide production capacities have put the former market leader in solar energy under severe pressure.

A German-Canadian businessman is building the world’s largest solar plant in California – By Katja Ridderbusch

Uwe T. Schmidt likes to think big. He believes in big business, in an entrepreneurial spirit that can shift horizons – and mostly in the fact that a man can be doing well while doing good; for the environment, for example. “Capitalism and environmentalism don’t have to be mutually exclusive,” Schmidt said.

He plans to practice what he preaches. Born almost 50 years ago in England to German parents, Schmidt holds a German and a Canadian passport and today serves as Chairman and CEO of Solar Trust of America. His company is currently building the world’s largest solar plant near the city of Blythe, California.

Just over 7,000 acres of public land will soon be transformed into an ocean of glistening parabolic troughs. The solar thermal plant is designed to generate about 1,000 megawatts of power, which is nearly three times the electricity produced by the country’s largest existing solar plant, and provide roughly 800,000 households with electricity.

Faber-Castell goes from being a local pencil maker to an international brand – By Arndt Peltner

To start with, the black lead pencil never had anything to do with lead. Since 1565, a “lead-colored substance” has been used in pencils, giving rise to the myth of being made out of the heavy metal. In the late 18th century, the German-Swedish chemist Karl Wilhelm Scheele proved that the “lead” in the pencil was in fact something else, something non-toxic. He named it graphite, from the Greek “graphein,” meaning “to write.” Nevertheless, users around the world call the instrument a “Blei­stift” or lead pencil.

In the mid-17th century, the free imperial city of Nuremberg was already a center for pencil makers. They had a poor reputation; their pencils were low quality, made of simple wooden sticks with a graphite end on each side. In 1761, Kaspar Faber set up his business a few miles outside the city walls of Nuremberg in the small town of Stein.

Almost 80 years later, his great-grandson Lothar Faber took over the company with a vision. He made pencils like we know them today, putting the Nuremberg region on the map as a European center of pencil production. He improved the graphite/clay method, mixing powdered graphite with clay to produce different grades of hardness for the pencils. His ideas for length, thickness and hardness of the writing tool became standard.

He also introduced the hexagonal pencil, and he focused on his brand, “A.W. Faber,” which he printed on each writing implement. Other manufacturers in the region followed his example, companies such as Staedtler, Schwan and Lyra. By the turn of the century, there were 25 pencil factories in Nuremberg, producing 250 million pencils a year.

“‘Oak full-on’ is what they call it today.” Helmut Sander knows that hardly anyone else shares his tastes these days.

Germans love do-it-yourself – By Nicole Graaf

The Sander family house is set back from the main road in a village outside of Cologne. A gray stone path leads to the front door, lined by flower beds filled with red gravel and nicely trimmed boxwood bushes.

An oak railing separates the front yard from the driveway that leads to the garage. Helmut Sander, 58, opens the door sporting short hair with swirls of gray and a friendly face. His wife Doris, is sitting in the living room where she is watching a TV program, a red brick wall behind her.

The Sander family has poured a lot of energy and love into this house. The plaster in the hallway, the rug, the wooden ceilings in every room, the small stairs that take you to the garden, even the wooden floors: they did everything themselves, cutting, bricklaying, plastering, hanging and painting. Of course they did.