“Fluctuating Prices and Falling Sales: The State of Building Materials in the Czech Republic”

Although sales of a number of items have fallen rapidly, manufacturers are trying to maintain prices. “Prices are very fluctuating,” Petr Vaněrka, head of the Pro-Doma network of construction companies, told Práv.

He specified that while in 2020, polystyrene cost around 1,200 crowns per cubic meter in retail, last year its price jumped to 2,200 crowns. “Now a cubic meter costs less than a thousand crowns,” he said.

Even though Pro-Doma does not register a significant drop in demand for polystyrene, after last year’s jump in price, sales of this material in the Czech Republic fell by fifteen percent year-on-year after five years of steady growth.

A total of 53,000 tons were consumed last year, nine thousand tons less than the year before. “In the second half of last year, volumes fell to record lows,” confirmed the chairman of the Polystyrene Foam Association, Pavel Zemene.

This year, he expects a recovery in demand due to the growing need for insulation as a result of expensive energy and the announced measures of the European Union. Iron prices are also falling, which rapidly rose in price with covid and the start of the war in Ukraine.

“Iron, or rod products, cost around forty crowns per kilogram last March. Now they are below twenty crowns per kilo and it is still going down. Two years ago, it cost fifteen crowns per kilo,” summarized Vaněrka.

According to him, the opening of new distribution sources also played a role. Iron products are newly imported from Italy, Turkey and also from Saudi Arabia.

However, not all items and in all retail stores see the iron discount. For example, in April 2021, Hornbach sold for 500 crowns a concrete curry net with a wire diameter of 0.6 millimeters, with meshes of 10 × 10 centimeters, with an area of ​​1.2 times two meters. During the price shock in May of the same year, it was already 733 crowns, and now Hornbach is selling it for 819 crowns.

“For concrete products such as paving stones, curbs and lost formwork, we see a forty percent decrease in demand year-on-year. But prices are now rather stagnant. In January, the producers raised prices again, now they’ve made them cheaper,” Vaněrka described.

So, for example, a garden curb measuring 500 x 200 x 50 millimeters fell below the level three years ago. In 2020, it cost around 48 crowns in retail stores, 57 crowns last year, plus or minus 46 crowns today.

The price of cement went up by twenty percent last January, and by another twenty five percent this January. Now its price is stagnant. Similarly, the prices of bricks and aerated concrete blocks have stabilized. Although the demand for them has dropped significantly compared to last year, the discount is not significant. “Manufacturers more or less keep the prices, just like with construction chemicals,” Vaněrka told Právu.

Nevertheless, some adhesives have already become cheaper. It depends on what the merchant or the manufacturer puts into action. And so, while the facade adhesive Weber tmel 700 in a 25-kilogram package cost 272 crowns in Pro-Doma the year before and 333 crowns last year, the company now offers it in the e-shop at a discount of 208 crowns.

A tube of Mamut glue with a volume of 290 milliliters could be purchased in 2020 for 206 crowns. A year later it cost over 230 crowns and today it is sold in the range of 160 to 180 crowns.

The prices of wooden products have also more or less stabilized. For example, at the Mrázek sawmill in Radotín, Prague, an unplaned, non-impregnated structural beam cost 1,400 crowns in 2021, today it costs 1,173 crowns.

Depending on the type, OSB boards here cost three to four hundred a piece, which is more or less a return to the prices common three years ago.

Other items, however, do not make customers so happy. While during the price shock in the middle of the year before last year, the price of spruce boards in the hypermarket jumped to 950 crowns per square meter from the original 515 crowns, today they cost around 862 crowns. It’s a discount, but it’s quite relative.

Note: Prices include VAT. For comparison, we have chosen older price lists and the current offer of Pro-Doma building materials. Prices can vary significantly between merchants. For example, the differences in OSB boards during the price shock in 2021 were up to CZK 150 per piece in one day between sellers.