The butcher fears the hook on the door after 102 years – VG

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VG has already written that the butcher has seen a fivefold increase in electricity bills this year.

Now the buffer is empty, says Benedicte. From October 17, they will close both the shop and production three days a week to cut operations in half so that they can save on electricity costs and be able to lay off employees.

– We will do everything to survive, he says.

– We are stubborn. We don’t want to give up even now, but we feel the current is devouring us.

– Tightens the legs of small businesses

The proposal for the state budget 2023 does not reflect the plight of many small and medium-sized enterprises, warns SMB Norway, an organization of interest to small and medium-sized enterprises (companies of up to 50 employees).

– With this budget, the government is strengthening its grip on small businesses, says SMB Norway CEO Jørund H. Rytman in a Press release.

– SME Norway has long predicted a wave of bankruptcies this winter. Unfortunately, there is nothing in this budget that will prevent this.

SME Norway calls the electricity support proposal for businesses a “toothless scheme that won’t help”.

– We understand that from a purely socio-economic point of view it is necessary to tighten public spending, but the macroeconomic basis for the budget does not reflect the reality for small businesses that are severely affected by high electricity prices, Rytman says in the press release .

Request for information

The electricity support package for businesses includes two-step support. In total, a company can get up to 3.5 million through the scheme, regardless of what stage it is in.

• Companies that carry out an energy saving survey can cover 25% of their electricity bill over 70 øre.
• Companies that implement energy saving measures. can get 45 percent covered.

But how they will get support is a mystery to sausage maker Benedicte Brubakken.

– There is no information, he says.

– Completely crazy

For Kragerø’s sausage makers, even a non-retroactive support program is of little help, says Benedicte. Last year they had an electricity bill of NOK 157,000 throughout the year. This year she had blown up 450,000 as early as August, she says.

– That one has to give up after 102 years because of electricity, in the richest country in the world, I think is completely insane, says Benedicte.

– There are also many people in the same boat – shouldn’t we have small producers again?

The government has long warned that there will be tighter deadlines and that the use of oil money must be reduced in next year’s budget. During his speech at the Storting on Thursday, Finance Minister Trygve Slagsvold Vedum repeatedly stressed that the troubled environment – with the war in Ukraine, skyrocketing energy prices and rising commodity prices – makes extremely important to pay attention to the use of oil money.

– Something has to happen

– Now there is war in Europe, should the government spend a lot of money on electricity subsidies to businesses?

– They blame the war, but it’s not just war, says Benedicte, adding that, if nothing else, the war in Ukraine should be “a wake-up call”.

– Prove that we need to be self-sufficient in Norway with food, he says.

The Brubakken brothers make sausages the old fashioned way. Customers have the meat weighed in front of them, before it is well wrapped in paper. Such large-scale Norwegian meat production is expensive, time-consuming and difficult, he says. Competition with major producers is fierce.

But they need help to survive, he says.

– Something has to happen. And it has to happen now.