Water levels on the Rhine river are dwindling further, with no relief in sight, forcing companies that rely on the waterway to adjust rapidly to keep goods flowing.Levels at Kaub, Germany — the Rhine’s shallowest point — have falle
n to the lowest since records began in 1880, and could drop further as another heat wave bakes Europe this week. Forecasters say it would take weeks of sustained rain to lift the river toward more normal levels, meaning the crisis could drag on into October.
The Rhine is a key shipping route through Europe’s industrial heartland, from Switzerland to Rotterdam, the continent’s busiest port. The disruption along the waterway is throwing up supply chain challenges for companies ranging from steelmaker Thyssenkrupp AG to BASF SE and Lanxess AG.
The disruption puts at risk supplies of commodities that are typically carried along the waterway, ranging from diesel, heating oil and coal to grains and cocoa.
German utility EnBW normally relies on shipments of coal which arrive from Rotterdam, while Germany’s Miro oil refinery exports gasoline on barges. EnBW on Friday estimated that the disruption on the Rhine will reduce its earnings by a low double-digit-million-euro figure.
“The Rhine’s low water levels are restricting inland shipping capacities and posing major challeng
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es for logistics and supply chains,” chemicals firm Evonik Industries AG said Tuesday. The company is reacting “with extensive precautionary measures and is shifting a part of its freight transport to rail and road.”
Like Evonik, BASF reported isolated bottlenecks, but said it’s been able to keep shipping along the river by deploying more vessels designed for low-water conditions. When necessary, it’s using land transportation.
Germany’s Inland Waterway Transport Cooperative maintains that barges can still pass at Kaub, with vessels able to get through even when the clearance level drops to around 10 centimeters, or about four inches. It’s currently at 14 cm at Kaub.
Whether a barge can navigate in such low water can depend on how many propellers it has, and how heavily laden it is with goods. Water levels at Kaub have been dropping for months, with one barge owner already idling vessels as of late July.
The clearance level doesn’t represent the actual depth of the navigation channel, but serves as a reference point for vessels. Based on German federal water
ways calculations, a gauge reading of 14 cm corresponds to a navigable fairway depth of about 1.27 meters. Forecasts from the Federal Waterways and Shipping Administration show the level could fall to 9 cm by Friday.
Parched Earth
Sparse rainfall and unrelenting heat have strangled the basin that feeds the Rhine, which has also been depleted by reduced runoff from Alpine snow and glaciers, said David Hannah, a professor of hydrology at the University of Birmingham in England.
While cooler temperatures are forecast for next week, with a chance of rain in Germany, any respite for the river may be short lived as weather models show a quick return to drier conditions, according to Don Keeney, lead forecaster at Vaisala.
To help alleviate transport bottlenecks, the northern German state of Schleswig-Holstein on Tuesday joined other regional governments in temporarily lifting a ban on trucking on Sundays and public holidays. “To keep the logistics chains necessary for supplying the public and the economy reasonably stable, they must be shifted — at least in part — to road transport,” the state’s economy ministry said.
Still, trucking can only help so much. Covestro AG, a German maker of polymers and high performance plastics, said its takes 60 trucks to replace a single barge with a load capacity of 1,500 metric tonnes. The situation is now affecting its raw material supplies and production at individual sites, it said, as well as the delivery of certain products.