As Europe's rivers recede, shippers scramble to limit damage

The situation is especially critical in Germany on the Rhine, the core of the European inland waterway transport network.

"The situation is unprecedented," a spokesperson for Maersk, the Danish shipping giant, told AFP. "Today, most of the inland ports along the Rhine cannot be reached by barge anymore."

Clecat, a European association that represents freight forwarders, agreed that the "most acute disruption has been on the Rhine". 

It said that at Kaub, a critical bottleneck for traffic on the river, the water gauge fell to around six centimetres (2.4 inches) on August 14, below the previous record low of 25 centimetres in 2018.

"The effects are being felt along the major industrial corridor from Rotterdam", Clecat said, adding that "Conditions are also severe on parts of the Danube, particularly in Serbia, Hungary and Romania".

One workaround for logistics operators is to move as much cargo off rivers as they can to trains or trucks. 

"The aim is to... keep the distances travelled on the Rhine as short as possible," transport company Contargo told AFP.

- No easy alternatives -

But the opportunities for rail and road transport are limited.

Jean-Laurent Kistler, development director at the French waterways authority (VNF) in Strasbourg, where the Rhine forms the border with Germany, estimated that transporting the load of a single barge required "100 to 200 trucks".

But many products transported in bulk -- such as chemicals, hydrocarbons, construction materials or grain -- are not easily transferred to containers.

VNF Strasbourg says the load carried by ships on the Rhine fell from an average of 1,500 tonnes to just 400 tonnes in August. 

The Clecat association noted the low river levels had already resulted in "higher transport costs, delays, postponed shipments and reduced production flexibility".

"The ships have to sail with lighter loads than usual to have less draught," said Alexandre Charpentier, transport specialist at the consulting firm Roland Berger, referring to how deep a vessel sits in the water.

"With fixed costs remaining the same, this leads to very significant unit cost increases," he said.

Operators pass on the resulting costs by applying low-water surcharges, which they introduce progressively if river levels keep falling.

These costs have reached more than 1,000 euros ($1,170) in surcharges per container at the most strained points, such as Kaub or Cologne, according to Contargo's rates. 

"It can quickly double for container freight" and "be even more drastic for bulk cargo", said Pierre Cossart, director of Sogestran Logistics.

- Costs passed on? -

According to Clecat, "whether higher logistics costs translate materially into consumer prices depends on the duration of the disruption, the commodity and companies' ability to absorb or pass on costs".

But it noted that "For many bulk commodities, transport is an important component of the delivered price, so sustained increases will ultimately be felt further down the supply chain."

Charpentier said it was too early to forecast eventual price increases for consumers, but warned that the extra costs were difficult to absorb in full. 

With drought episodes only expected to increase, operators are banking on better-suited vessels and greater intermodality, or the added use of trains and trucks.

But resilience also comes from water management, according to the VNF's Kistler.

While France has built a series of reservoirs and diversion channels along its portion of the Rhine to manage the flows, on the German side the river runs freely and is highly dependent on rainfall.

"We went from 10 ships a day to 25 (on Wednesday), 14 of them loaded," said Kistler, adding that it was "still far from the optimal load". 

"This doesn't save the day."

enl/tq/yk/amj/js