Rhine water at 16 cm below threshold chokes barge traffic
The Rhine River’s water level in its shallowest middle section dropped to 16 centimeters below the low-water threshold as of Monday, threatening to halt barge traffic on a key central Europe corridor. As of Monday, the river’s navigable depth measured roughly 4.25 feet, per Germany’s Federal Waterways and Shipping Administration.
The river connects the Rotterdam and Antwerp ports—handling 14.2 million and 13.6 million TEU annually—to inland cities across Europe. Only very small vessels or barges loaded to no more than 20 % of capacity can navigate the upper and middle Rhine, per terminal operator Oliver Haas. One barge typically moves the freight of about 200 trucks, so the capacity shortfall is pushing shippers onto rail and road networks that lack spare trains, terminal space and drivers. Rail bottlenecks at the North Sea ports and a shortage of truck drivers are adding to delays and raising costs for container repositioning and demurrage. The Elbe and Danube rivers are also experiencing historically low water levels due to severe drought and heat.
“The only very small vessels, or ones partially loaded to 20% of their capacity, are able to transit the upper and middle Rhine,” Oliver Haas, general manager of HGK Intermodal, a terminal operator at the Port of Cologne said.
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.
What we know
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 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.
One barge can carry the equivalent of 200 trucks.