At 14 metres tall and weighing in at a hefty four tonnes, it’s impossible to miss. It’s the star of Luxembourg City’s Winterlights festival, and will be illuminating the capital’s Christmas markets until 7 January 2024. Exceptional in terms of its size, the majestic twenty-year-old spruce that currently towers over the Place d’Armes is also exceptional in terms of its provenance. It’s a tree from... Luxembourg.

Every year, the City of Luxembourg’s parks department launches an appeal to private individuals wishing to have any of their trees felled, before reserving the best specimens for themselves.

It’s a win-win deal, which also allows the administration to “avoid high transport costs.”

19 hectares declared

On the other hand, the tree that will be standing in our living rooms between now and Christmas may have come a long way. Because although Luxembourg production is a reality, it only exists on the margins. Of the 120,000 trees sold over the festive period, “less than 20% come from Luxembourg,” says one specialist.

The business relies on a handful of nurserymen, farmers and a few private individuals who are as keen on growing fir trees as others are on beekeeping. Neither the Fédération horticole du Luxembourg nor the Administration des services techniques de l’agriculture (Asta), to name but two bodies, have any consolidated data.

Proof that the fir tree escapes many radars, in 2023, ten companies declared 19 hectares of specific cultivation, down by more than 50% compared to last year. The figure was 18 hectares in 2010.

Denmark, then Belgium

According to estimates, 80-90% of the conifers sold for the festive season come from outside France. Three countries account for the lion’s share of exports: Denmark, Belgium and Germany.

In Denmark, where ten million Christmas trees leave the ground every year, the Christmas tree has become an economy in its own right, strongly encouraged by public policy. A dedicated foundation has even been set up.

Luxembourg, meanwhile, is unsurprisingly looking more to neighbouring plantations. “I have around thirty customers in the country,” says Jonathan Rigaux, manager of a large nursery in Neufchâteau and chairman of the Ardennes Nurserymen's Union (UAP), which has 64 member companies. Belgium produces between 3m and 3.2m fir trees a year, of which only 700,000 are destined for the domestic market. The rest is exported.

With 900 jobs (500 direct, 400 indirect), Wallonia is the epicentre of this juicy business in Belgium. The local authorities have introduced a growth plan aimed at increasing production by 25% over the next ten years. In other words, there’s still plenty of Belgian Christmas trees to go around in Luxembourg.

“In the north of the country, you could easily produce more,” says Rigaux, but that’s not the mentality. “It’s not a very profitable form of agriculture compared with others. And in any case, Luxembourg farmers are ‘real’ farmers, landowners at heart. I’m not pleading my case, but if I were Luxembourg’s agriculture minister, I wouldn’t invest in growing fir trees at the expense of nourishing agriculture. Nourishing agriculture is too precious an asset.”

“Too small a market”

“The local market is terribly fragmented,” notes Gérald de Wouters, Greencap’s Belgium manager, whose company has a logistics structure in Luxembourg. Also present in Brittany in France, his company--based in Libin (province of Luxembourg)--prides itself on being the largest producer of Belgian fir trees. It no longer trades with the grand duchy, "too small a market for a large company like ours.” Its customers order up to several tens of thousands of specimens. “In Luxembourg, it would be 300 or 400 pieces for resellers.”

Supermarkets, on the other hand, call on their central purchasing agencies. Orders are generally placed in the summer, with the trees harvested in early November. In this sector, sales for the year are decided as if on a roll of the dice, in four or five weeks.

Germany is a popular destination. Number three in the European export ranking, it is the second largest producer with 5m trees. Foreign sales account for only a fifth of the total.

Local initiatives

Although more discreet, the Luxembourg fir is not to be outdone. The ingenious Bamschoul Becker nursery in Steinsel is offering a rental scheme for the festive season. Delivered to your home, the tree is taken back by the nursery once the bûche de Noël, or Yule log, has been digested.

Another noteworthy initiative took root during the covid-19 pandemic. At the time, the sports events company Optin was at a standstill. Its founder, Romain Haas, racked his brains looking for a plan B. “We looked around and there were no services yet offering tree delivery,” he recalls. He then launched the online sales site Sapins.lu.

What makes it special is that the platform operates on a short circuit. “We searched long and hard to find a local producer. They had to meet our criteria.” Namely, a tree that was as “green” as possible. Sapins.lu found what it was looking for in Buschrodt, in the canton of Redange.

The business is running smoothly. For Christmas 2022, the company took 365 orders, up 60% on the previous year.

Weather throws a spanner in the works

For 2023, there is a problem: the selected producer does not have a sufficient quantity of Christmas trees. They take several years to grow. Some of the trees will therefore come from a nursery near Trier.

An additional obstacle is the weather. “A carnage”, sums up de Wouters, Greencap’s Belgium manager. Intense rain in recent months has put a strain on harvest yields. “Down 30 to 40%. We’’e not going to run out of trees, but there will be a delay in deliveries. Things should be back to normal after the first weekend in December. This applies to all European countries.”

Plastic not so fantastic

The continental market is worth some 65m trees. “Stable,” says de Wouters, “but without being a great analyst, I note that the population is increasing and that this figure is not changing. This means that the market is potentially shrinking.”

Does this benefit the artificial Christmas tree? At present, the balance of power in Luxembourg still seems to be largely in favour of the “natural” variety and accounts for around eight out of ten sales, according to observers. The latter dismiss the “green” argument.

“The average lifespan of a plastic Christmas tree is three years. But it would take 18 years for its carbon footprint to catch up with that of a natural tree,” argues de Wouters.

Not to mention that the probability of a plastic tree coming from Luxembourg is zero...

This article was first published in French on . It has been translated and edited for Delano.