About Holz-Zentralblatt

Holz-Zentralblatt

The Holz-Zentralblatt is Germany's leading weekly trade journal for the forestry and timber industry, published by the DRW-Verlag Weinbrenner in Leinfelden-Echterdingen near Stuttgart. Founded in 1874 as the "Centralblatt für den deutschen Holzhandel," it appears every Friday in newspaper format with a sold circulation of 5,718 copies (IVW 4/2025), reaching around 10,000 subscribers weekly with the most important news and developments from business, science, and politics. As the flagship of the Swabian family publishing house, now led in its fourth generation by Claudia Weinbrenner-Seibt, the journal covers the timber market, woodworking machinery and tools, wood research results, and developments in wood processing: everything that matters in forestry and timber.

Overview

The Holz-Zentralblatt is a trade journal for entrepreneurs and executives in forestry and timber: sawmill owners, timber traders, forest owners, and the managers of wood-processing companies. Its weekly rhythm, unusual among trade journals, reflects the market's need for timeliness: timber prices, storm events, and political framework changes move fast, and the journal makes their effects visible across the entire value chain. The thematic range extends from plant cultivation to the use of wood in construction and the furniture industry.

The journal's authority rests on its market reporting: the timber market's prices and trends are the industry's essential information, and the Holz-Zentralblatt's weekly coverage is the reference. Regular focus issues concentrate on important special topics such as energy and the sawmill industry, on trade-fair events including Ligna and Interzum, or on countries and regions such as France, Italy, and Scandinavia. The daily newsletter reaches more than 2,000 recipients directly, extending the weekly print rhythm into daily digital news.

History

Karl Weinbrenner laid the first building block of today's internationally active media house in 1874 with the "Centralblatt für den deutschen Holzhandel." In 1917, he took over the "Centralanzeiger," the information sheet for the timber trade, further consolidating the publishing house's position. Through the decades of the German Empire, the Weimar Republic, the Nazi era, and the postwar Federal Republic, the journal documented the timber industry's transformations: from the horse-drawn timber trade to the mechanized forestry, from the postwar reconstruction boom to the globalization of the timber markets.

The Swabian family business was led until his death by Karl-Heinz Weinbrenner (1942-2013) and his daughter Claudia Weinbrenner-Seibt in the third and fourth generations. Today, Claudia Weinbrenner-Seibt leads the publishing house, part of the Weinbrenner corporate group with around 120 employees. The flagship Holz-Zentralblatt has maintained its weekly Friday publication through 150 years of German history, a continuity that makes it one of the country's oldest trade journals.

Coverage and Content

The timber market coverage is the journal's core: prices, trends, and market analyses for roundwood, sawn timber, and wood products, with the effects of storms, bark-beetle calamities, and political decisions traced through the value chain. Machinery and tool reporting covers the woodworking industry's equipment, from sawmill technology to CNC processing. Wood research results bring the science to the practitioners, while developments in wood processing follow the innovations in construction, furniture, and the emerging bioeconomy.

The focus issues provide depth: energy topics address the wood-energy sector, from pellets to biomass plants; sawmill-industry specials cover the primary processing; trade-fair issues preview and review Ligna, the world's leading woodworking fair in Hanover, and Interzum in Cologne; country and region specials cover the international markets. Political reporting addresses the framework conditions: forest policy, nature conservation, building regulations, and the EU's deforestation rules. The journal's 150-year archive is itself a historical resource for the German forest and timber industry.

The Timber Market Context

The Holz-Zentralblatt serves an industry in the midst of multiple transformations. Climate change has devastated German forests: drought, storms, and bark-beetle infestations have killed vast areas of spruce, flooding the market with damaged timber and reshaping the raw-material base. The forest conversion toward climate-resilient mixed forests changes what the sawmills will process in the coming decades. At the same time, timber construction is booming as a climate-friendly building method, creating new demand for construction timber and engineered wood products.

Regulation adds complexity: the EU Deforestation Regulation requires proof of deforestation-free supply chains, the building codes evolve toward climate neutrality, and forest policy balances timber production with biodiversity and carbon storage. For the industry's entrepreneurs and executives, navigating these simultaneous transformations requires exactly the kind of weekly intelligence the Holz-Zentralblatt provides: market prices, political developments, and technological innovations, traced across the entire value chain from the forest to the finished building.

The Publishing House

The DRW-Verlag Weinbrenner GmbH & Co. KG, based at Fasanenweg 18 in Leinfelden-Echterdingen, publishes a family of wood-industry media. B+H Bauen und Holz, the journal for the timber trade and the building-materials market, appears six times a year as a supplement to the Holz-Zentralblatt with a circulation of 12,800 copies per issue. HK Holz- und Kunststoffverarbeitung, founded in 1965, appears six times a year for the wood and furniture industry with around 6,500 copies. Exakt, appearing nine times a year, serves the woodworking crafts: joiners, carpenters, and interior fitters. Annual magazines cover laminates, timber construction, doors, design and fittings, surfaces, MDF, and veneer.

The publishing house also publishes specialist books and calendars, extending its expertise beyond periodicals. With 41 employees in the publishing house and around 120 in the corporate group, the DRW-Verlag is a mid-sized specialist publisher with an international reach: special editions appear in the respective national languages in Europe's most important countries. The editorial team of the Holz-Zentralblatt includes Bernd Amschl, Jens Fischer, Raphael Hunkemöller, Jürgen Härer, Michael Ißleib, Karsten Koch, Josef Krauhausen, and Markus A. Maesel.

Organization and Ownership

The Holz-Zentralblatt is published by the DRW-Verlag Weinbrenner GmbH & Co. KG, part of the Weinbrenner corporate group, based in Leinfelden-Echterdingen. The publishers are Karl-Heinz Weinbrenner (until his death in 2013) and Claudia Weinbrenner-Seibt, who leads the family business in its fourth generation. The family ownership gives the publishing house a long-term orientation unusual in the media industry: the 150-year continuity of the flagship journal reflects an ownership that thinks in generations rather than quarters.

The business model combines subscriptions, with around 10,000 weekly readers, with advertising from the industry's machinery manufacturers, traders, and service providers. The media data offer the full range of print advertising, from millimeter rates to full pages, with joint discounts for advertising in both the Holz-Zentralblatt and HK. The daily newsletter and the digital offerings extend the revenue base into digital advertising.

Digital Presence

The portal holz-zentralblatt.de is the journal's digital home, with the daily news, the market reports, and the e-paper editions. The daily newsletter reaches more than 2,000 recipients, delivering the latest events directly to their computers. For a weekly newspaper, the digital presence provides the timeliness that the Friday print rhythm cannot: storm damage, price movements, and political decisions are reported as they happen.

The 150-year-old journal's digital transformation demonstrates how a heritage trade medium can adapt: the weekly print newspaper remains the authoritative record, while the newsletter and the website provide the daily pulse. In an industry where the weekly market report has been the essential information for generations, the Holz-Zentralblatt's combination of print authority and digital timeliness keeps it indispensable: whoever wants to inform themselves about developments in the German-speaking timber industry cannot bypass the Holz-Zentralblatt.