ZURICH, SWITZERLAND – Credit Suisse Thursday pushed its GDP growth forecast down sharply, from 2 percent to 0.5 percent, for 2012. The bank points to the euro crisis, which “continues to weigh on markets, with economic momentum in Europe fading unexpectedly quickly.” Switzerland will be hurt by the fall in exports due to “decidedly gloomier” prospects for countries to which the Swiss export, and the accompanying fall in capital investment on new machinery and equipment.
Consumers and the construction industry, which continues to boom thanks to low interest rates, will prop up economic growth, the bank’s analysts say.
Renovations, new construction: building industry and consumption will prop up Swiss economy in 2012
But “a significant cooling of European growth is no longer avoidable”, according to Credit Suisse, and “while the US economy has accelerated again slightly following the dip seen in mid-2011, the opposite is occurring in Europe. Most significantly, economic momentum in Germany – Switzerland’s key trading partner – has slowed. At the same time, the partial spillover of the debt crisis to Italy has brought increased volatility on the financial markets, growing tensions on the credit and interbank markets, and falling confidence among households and businesses.”
Sentiment is more of an issue than home-grown problems, the bank notes, pointing out that Swiss public finances and companies do not have excess debt.
“On the contrary, interest rates in Switzerland will remain low until at least the end of 2012. In addition, inflation is not an issue in Switzerland at present; pressure on consumer prices is holding up, so purchasing power is safeguarded (inflation in 2012: 0.4%). Finally, immigration is likely to remain strong, meaning an important driver of the growth in consumption will remain in place. By contrast, the constant talk of crisis, together with a deterioration in the labor market situation (unemployment rate in 2012: 3.3%), is increasingly impacting sentiment, and poses certain constraints for the growth in consumption.”
Too much of a good thing means we need to cut back, says the Federal Office of Public Health
BERN, SWITZERLAND – The Swiss are known for their conservative approach to money, but one area where they are too liberal, it appears, is in adding sodium, or table salt, to their food. A study released Monday by the Federal Office of Public Health (FOPH) shows that people consume nearly double the amount of salt they should, but it also points to ways to reduce this, starting with the food industry.
Too much salt causes health problems, with the risk of cardiovascular disease high on the list. The Chuv (university hospitals) in Lausanne was mandated to carry out the research, with questionnaires for 1,500 people followed up by tests for hypertension.
Men were found to consume more salt than women, 10.6 grams compared to 7.8g. The World Health Organization’s recommends an intake of 5g maximum.
More men had a problem with high blood pressure, 32.3 percent, than women, 19.1 percent, but the average of more than 25 percent shows a population too much at risk for cardiovascular disease, says the FOPH.
School lunches, work canteens will use less salt, more herbs and spices
Expect less, get more, could well be the motto of the future for the Swiss population, with the food industry and researchers now working with the health office to cut back on the use of salt without any loss of flavour or safety in order to help consumers boost their health.
The study is part of the FOPH’s “Salt Strategy 2008–2012“, which aims to reduce the nation’s salt consumption. Salt Strategy is one part of the Swiss Nutrition and Physical Activity Programme 2008–2012.
Eleven categories of products have been targeted for reduced salt, with the federal government laying out recommendations for industry cutting back. Read more…
WWF shines a light on the new bulbs, with old ones disappearing next year
Photo: WWF
ZURICH, SWITZERLAND – The WWF conservation group is giving us a helping hand four months before the shock sets in of discovering you can’t just replace your old light bulb with the same thing. Switzerland in the autumn of 2012 will bury its incandescent lights and replace them with LED ones that consume seven times less energy for the same amount of luminosity and other energy-efficient products.
Only 5 percent of the energy transformed by traditional incandescent lights goes into light. The rest simply dissipates as heat.
The Swiss consume 8.2 billion kilowatt hours a year and, says WWF, this could be cut in half “and thus avoiding the need for the Muehleberg nuclear power plant”.
WWF is publishing a guide this week to the pros and cons of the new lighting technology, called “Lumière” in French (available in French and German). It evaluates lighting products already on the market and compares their energy efficiency, using a visual stop-and-go system of red to green.
The group’s recommendations:
- buy LED, fluorescent or energy efficient lights, keeping in mind that while the latter are more expensive than today’s incandescent lights, their lifespan of 30,000 hours is twice that of our old bulbs
- when buying lighting systems, buy only systems that use the new lightbulbs/tubes (TopTen is a consumer product comparison site)
- avoid classic spots and halogen lamps, which are barely more efficient than incandescent lighting
- eco-halogen as well is lighting that makes little real improvement.
The brochure is available online and can also be consulted while shopping, via smartphone (“Guide WWF”)
Download French version of Factsheet on lights and lighting
Photo, ©2011 Swissmilk
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The Swiss have outdone themselves as cheese-eaters, climbing from their world leader position in 2009, when consumption was a record-breaking 21.4 kilos per inhabitant, to 21.55 in 2010.
The new figures, published by Swissmilk, show the Swiss eating more fresh cheese in particular, but also semi-hard and very hard cheese.
The news is not all good for Swiss cheesemakers, with the total increase of 170 grams including an increase of 300 grams of imported cheese.
Foreign cheeses account for 27.2 percent of the market in Switzerland.
Mozzarella remains the most popular cheese by far, followed by Gruyere, but Appenzeller and Emmental are gaining in popularity.
Source: Swissmilk 2011
Room for improvement: new label will show which shower heads are hot water savers
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Habitat and Jardin, a popular consumer fair in Lausanne opens Saturday 12 March for 8 days, and one of its hottest stands promises to be run by the SuisseEnergie label programme, which is launching a new hot water saver label at the fair.
The label was developed by the federal government, working with retailer Coop’s DIY home shop, Brico Centre and can be used on products that meet newly defined standards for taps, shower heads and water savers.
Hot water accounts for 50 percent of home energy needs
The rationale behind the new label is simple: hot water needs in the past represented a far smaller proportion of household energy, 10 percent in 1970, well behind home heating energy requirements, but today hot water accounts for 50 percent of home energy needs.
Greater efficiency has been achieved in other energy-consuming areas, but the energy used to heat home water has increased.
Switzerland efforts to develop standards for energy-saving labels dates back to 2000, when the “Energy” label was introduced for hot water. Its greatest successes have come with etiquetteEnergie labels for home appliances, introduced in 2002, and later for cars and lightbulbs.
SuisseEnergie will have four sinks and taps on display as well as several shower heads to demonstrate how hot water can be saved using various solutions and systems: stand 110 in halle 1 at the fair.
Geneva-Servette Hockey Club players, here training, are more fit than the average person in Switzerland
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Switzerland takes the country’s health pulse once every five years, and the 2010 results, published 2 November, show too many Swiss remain overweight, at 34 percent of the population, with 8 percent considered obese. Only two in five persons has an adequate level of exercise. That said, the Swiss generally consider themselves to be in good health, 87 percent. The weight and exercise figures might be higher than health authorities would like, but the reassuring news is that the Swiss national waistline has stopped expanding.
The number of overweight people in Switzerland grew steadily from 1990 to 2002, up from 30 percent of the population, but since 2002 it has remained stable at 37 percent.
Other key findings of the survey, based on questionnaires given to 18,760 individuals residing in Switzerland:
Mathematical invention part of the future shrinking of our electronic devices
EPFL infograph, Pascal Coderey, 2010
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – EPFL is boasting its 1,000th invention 3 November, with the official arrival of Kandou, a new system based on mathematics whose daunting task is to try to reduce the world’s computer electricity consumption, currently 150 billion kWh per year, which translates into a monthly bill of several billion dollars. The university is boldly predicting that Kandou “could equip most of our electronic systems within a few years.”
Kandou is the 1,000th invention to arrive in the university’s Service of Industrial Relations. It was invented by Harm Cronie and Amin Shokrollahi of the EPFL algorithm laboratory and in a nutshell “enables processors to communicate more rapidly—while using less energy—with their peripherals”: memory, printers, monitors, an EPFL press release notes. The system has already sparked strong interest from large companies in the computer field, it adds.
Most electronic appliances today use ultra-rapid processors that communicate with other processors or other peripherals by using electronic buses, a kind of information highways.
Alexandria, Egypt is about to enforce old regulations: no smoking in public buildings. The move is the first step in a two-year plan to ban smoking completely in the city. Egyptians consume 19 billion cigarettes a year, making them “the biggest Arab consumer of cigarettes”, according to the BBC.
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The Swiss drank more French champagne and more bottled wine from Italy, and especially more imported red wine in 2009, a year where the global economic crisis appears to have had a curious impact on wine consumption in the country. Imports rose by 3.4 percent in 2009, after falling in 2008, with Italy remaining the largest exporter to Switzerland, accounting for 37 percent of imported wine. Bulk white wines, imported mainly from Italy but bottled in Switzerland, fell by 5.4 percent while bottled white wine from the southern neighbour rose by 5.9 percent, indicating a shift in consumer habits, with growing interest in domain wines from abroad.
Consumption rose more slowly than imports, with stocks increasing.
New world wines lag well behind European imports, with France in second place, 23 percent, and Spain in third, 20 percent of imports. France is the leader in value terms, with 36 percent of the import market, thanks to the price of champagne. Imports from Germany and Chile were up strongly, while South African wine imports fell.
Total wine consumption in Switzerland slipped by 0.9 percent to 2.8 million hectolitres, with a fall in Swiss wine consumption, down by 49,030 hectolitres, playing a key role. A hectolitre equals 100 litres and is used to measure wine consumption in Europe.
Swiss German wine consumption rose, while French-speaking Switzerland’s wines slipped on the home market, the opposite of the situation in 2008.
Producing Swiss Emmental cheese (image, Swiss Cheese Marketing)
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The Swiss are the world leaders in eating cheese and for 2009 the country set a new record for per person consumption, 21.4 kg. New 2009 figures from the Swissmilk show that in economically tight times the Swiss ate more, not less cheese, with consumption rising by 240g per person. The preference is for fresh, medium-hard cheeses.
Swiss cheese consumption 2009 (table, Swissmilk - click on image to view larger)
Those numbers are not as reassuring as the Swissmilk, the national milk farmers’ federation would like because foreign cheeses accounted for the increase, with Switzerland consuming 310g more of imported cheese, per person, and 70g less of Swiss cheese.
Appenzeller was the big loser, with consumption falling 10.5 percent, and Emmental was the big winner, up 7.5 percent. Switzerland Cheese Marketing will lead a country-wide publicity campaign to push the quality of Swiss cheese to consumers, starting in May 2010.
Elisabeth Pasquier, Francois Murisier, Vinea's director and president, 2010
Sierre, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Vinea, a Valais-based association that was created 15 years ago to showcase the wines of Switzerland’s largest wine-producing canton, has grown into a major player in the wine world, far beyond its original Valais borders. Tuesday evening the group gave itself a new structure to better place it to educate the world about Swiss wines.
The wine business accounts for 15 percent of agricultural products, about half that of Swiss dairy products, including cheese. Agriculture is 1 percent of Swiss GDP (gross domestic product) overall, well behind industry and the service sector, which includes banking. But wine remains an important part of Swiss society, especially in French-speaking areas where vineyards often dominate the landscape.
New statutes were approved for Vinea to reflect the growing number of activities and work it does outside canton Valais. One of the country’s best-known wine experts, François Murisier, was named president of the revised association, with Elisabeth Pasquier, the former managing director, named to the new post of director.
Murisier is the former head of wine grape growing and oenology at the Swiss federal centre, Agroscope Changins-Waedenswil. He is an expert with the OIV (International Organization of Vin and Wine) and president of the scientific committee of Cervim, a mountain wines organization.
Discreet Swiss hotel windows are sometimes a good minibar substitute
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The 55,000 mini-bars in Swiss hotels consume far more energy than the average home refrigerator for a family of four, some 24 million kW hours in a year. The heart of the problem is the sad news for hotel clients who love drinks in their rooms that a 40-litre minibar consumes 0.9 kW/h versus the 0.24 that a 150-litre refrigerator uses.
Click on image to view larger
Geneva's top wines are often red
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The Swiss carried on drinking wine in much the same way in 2008 as in 2007, consuming 2.78 million hectolitres (1 hectolitre = 100 litres or 22 gallons) of wine, roughly 36 bottles per person for the year for the permanent population of 7.7 million. But they drank less red wine from abroad, down 3 percent, and more foreign white wine, up 5.1 percent, the Swiss agriculture ministry says. Red wine continues to dominate, despite foreigners’ common perception that Switzerland is a land of white wines: 69 percent of wine consumed last year was red.
Valais, Swiss hydroelectric power
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – A strong GDP (gross domestic product), larger population and leap year all contributed to a 2.3 percent increase in energy consumption in Switzerland in 2008, the federal government says. The 58.7 billion kilowatt hours set a record for annual consumption. Electricity production also set a record, up 1.6 percent, but it was unable to keep pace with consumption and Swiss electricity exports to neighbouring countries in summer were nearly halved. In winter, when Switzerland imports some electricity, the amount needed rose.
Bern, Switzerland (TSR, Fre) – The Swiss have been increasing their consumption of fresh vegetables and in 2007 they ate a record 75 kg per person, with carrots (8.94 kg per person) heading the list, followed by tomatoes, with 8.48 kg. Lightweight iceberg lettuce comes in third, with a mere 3.93kg per person. Source: Swiss truck gardening centre.
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Swiss wine producers at the opening today of Arvinis in Morges will be smiling, with the government announcing Tuesday the first upturn in wine consumption in several years. Figures for 2007 show a 3.6% overall increase in wine consumed, but with a rise of 5.7% for Swiss wines and 2.3% for foreign wines. Non-Swiss wines nevertheless remain a substantial part of the market, with 1.7 hectolitres out of a total of 2.8 hectolitres consumed.
Pinot noir, the grape made famous by Burgundy but grown widely throughout the world, is Switzerland’s largest variety, with 4,449 hectares planted. Chasselas, the white grape often associated with Swiss wine, is the second most common variety, with 4,265 hectares planted. Red wine accounts for 51% of the total produced, with white wine having 49%.
Switzerland is notable for the variety of grapes grown because of the large variations in terroirs, with their specific mixes of soil, air, altitude and light. There was strong growth in several new varieties and some of the specialty grapes in 2007, including Gamaret (+18 ha), Merlot (+17 ha), Garanoir (+13 ha) and Diolinoir (+11
ha), plus Petite Arvine (+7 ha) and
Savagnin blanc/Heida (+12 ha).
Arvinis is one of Switzerland’s main annual wine events, with 18,000 visitor expected to sample some 2,000 wines from 16-21 April 2008. GenevaLunch will be publishing a series of articles on Swiss wine during the event.
Ed. note: wine is measured in hectolitres, one of which equals 100 litres.
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