“It is only a matter of time before plants in the chemical or steel industry are shut down, mineral oils and building materials do not reach their destination or large-volume and heavy transports can no longer be carried out,” said Holger Loesch, deputy general manager of the Federal Association of Germans on Tuesday Industry.
The consequences would be delivery bottlenecks, production cutbacks or standstills and short-time work. The persistent dry period and the low water would threaten the security of supply for the industry. “Companies are preparing for the worst. The already tense economic situation in the companies is getting worse,” says Loesch.
“Inland waterway vessels are currently operating with minimal capacity utilization, if at all. Switching from inland waterways to rail and road will be difficult this summer due to the bottlenecks on the rails, the corona pandemic and the lack of drivers.” The enormous low water could also further exacerbate the energy supply emergency. “The political plans to temporarily rely more on coal in view of the gas crisis are being thwarted by massive transport bottlenecks. In addition to coal transport, the fuel supply also depends on transport via waterways.”
Loesch demanded that the German government, together with the federal states, the logistics sector and industry, must introduce close monitoring in order to be able to react to impending bottlenecks on the waterways at an early stage.
Cargo and passenger ships in particular have been struggling with low water for weeks. Inland waterway skippers must take the draft of the ship into account when loading their cargo. At low water levels, they can carry less cargo – at some point, transportation becomes uneconomical.
On a section of the Rhine, the water level had already fallen to zero on Tuesday due to a lack of rain. This value was measured on the Lower Rhine in Emmerich near the border with the Netherlands, said the spokesman for the Rhine Waterways and Shipping Office, Christian Hellbach, the Reuters news agency. It was only on Monday that the previous record low of October 2018 was undercut by three centimeters. The water level is not synonymous with the fairway depth, which is decisive for shipping. This was recently just under two meters in Emmerich. “Ships can continue to operate,” said Hellbach. “But you have to adjust your load accordingly.”
Source: Nachrichten
