Wood. Even high-rise buildings are already being built from the renewable raw material.

Frankfurt “You can build on these bricks” is an old slogan of a well-known building society. But times change. The new material of the hour is called wood.

A recently announced deal by the listed company Alstria Office illustrates the immense importance of building materials for the real estate industry: The Hamburg company, whose core business is investments in office properties in the major German economic centers, bought a piece of forest.

In order to explain the deal, the management announced that it was anticipating a significant increase in demand for wood in the coming years and that the supply would be limited at the same time. The 200 hectares of forest in Brandenburg – an area the size of a good 280 football fields – only cover around two percent of the Hamburg company’s annual wood requirements, but Alstria wants to buy more “in order to secure the company’s future ability to act”.