Record-low Rhine levels choke barge traffic, stress ground transport

Water levels in the shallowest middle section of the Rhine River have fallen to 16 centimeters below the low-water threshold, threatening to halt all barge transportation on a critical supply chain corridor for central Europe that has experienced severely reduced traffic since early summer because of ongoing drought conditions.

The actual navigable depth as of Monday was about 4. 25 feet, according to Germany’s Federal Waterways and Shipping Administration. Voyages through Switzerland and southern Germany have virtually stopped.

The inability to move large volumes of containers and bulk goods between major North Sea ports and inland centers is creating huge operational headaches and cost pressures for businesses and their logistics partners. And there is little rain in the forecast.

Why It Matters: Low water levels mean barges need to wait at port or carry smaller payloads to reduce their draft, resulting in less capacity and higher rates, and forcing shippers to divert loads to other, less efficient, modes and routes, according to freight experts. “Nothing like this has happened before. The impact is massive and it’s just starting now.

I think it’s going to get worse and I don’t think any of us are ready for it. The impact this is going to have on trucking in Europe is monumental in terms of price, access to capacity, delays. And this can affect all modes — air and ocean. It’s going to be really tough,” said Mark Chadwick, president of the Global Shippers Association, on the Aug.

19 episode of the Freight Buyer’s Club podcast. At the time, businesses were complaining that water levels were below 3. 3 feet, preventing most barges from operating in the upper and middle portion of the Rhine. Conditions have only gotten worse in the past month.

Previous low-water events in Europe have typically occurred in late summer or fall, when dry summers followed low snow melts, so experts are unsure what to predict with rivers drying out so early. The Rhine links the ports of Rotterdam (14. 2 million standard container units of annual throughput), and Antwerp (13.

6 million units) with cities across Europe’s interior. The only very small vessels, or ones partially loaded to 20% of their capacity, are able to transit the upper and middle Rhine, said Oliver Haas, general manager of HGK Intermodal, a terminal operator at the Port of Cologne, during an August webinar presented by DHL Global Forwarding.

The Elbe and Danube rivers also face historically low water levels due to severe drought and heat. Cargo ships stopped operating nearly entirely during the summer, according to Hungary’s Ministry of Transport and Investment. Less cargo per trip means more voyages are required to move the same amount of cargo, putting a premium on barges and empty containers.

One barge can carry the equivalent of 200 trucks. But more barges aren’t available because many of them switched to the Danube Delta, which also has low water, during the Ukraine war, said Haas.

Limited options for shippers Import shipments require longer transit times to reach their destination because of the reduced barge availability and capacity constraints on rail and road transport networks that are struggling to accommodate volumes normally moved via inland waterways, said Thomas Kowitzki, the head of multimodal transport in Europe for DHL Global Forwarding.

Under the circumstances, cargo owners face less flexibility making last-minute booking changes, transit times are less predictable and there’s a high risk of missing import delivery dates or planned vessel connections for export shipments. A container barge transits the Rhine River when water levels are normal.

(Photo: HKG Intermodal) Adding more train service isn’t feasible, Haas added, because the North Sea ports lack the infrastructure to handle more train sets. They also don’t have space to handle more barges. And truck drivers are difficult to find.

In addition to higher transportation and container repositioning costs to reroute products by rail or over the road, shippers face demurrage and detention storage fees amid mounting backlogs at ocean and inland terminals that don’t have room to quickly process containers.

Some importers are trying to bypass the congestion by using German ports in Hamburg, Bremerhaven and Wilhelmshaven, which connect to the Elbe and Weser rivers, and other transport modes. Other alternatives are the ports of Koper, Slovenia, and Trieste, Italy, in the Adriatic Sea, and Genoa and Barcelona in the Mediterranean.

“In same situations, multimodal solutions combining barge, rail, and truck can provide the best balance between costs, service reliability, and transit time,” said Florian Woebb, head of intermodal for Europe at DHL’s forwarding unit.

“Our recommendation is to evaluate transportation decisions from an end-to-end supply chain perspective, not simply to replace barge transport.” Finding a truck can take up to two weeks and booking an intermodal rail shipment can take up to six