Germany’s waterways continue to suffer with low water volumes and levels. The bottlenecks for industrial transports on rivers, especially the Rhine, have not recovered by much, or only temporarily.
In fact, after record lows were seen in August for the Rhine, those values have been undercut at some locations along the river in September, according to the national water authority Bundesamt für Gewässerkunde. “An alleviation is not in sight in the first half of October,” it warns.
Rain has been forecast to fall in the coming days, “but too little and, too short to take sustainable effect on the levels of the national waterways.”
The raw materials supply and steel deliveries to and from the country’s largest steelmaker, thyssenkrupp Steel, on the junction of Rhine and Ruhr, remains problematic, the company tells Kallanish.
“Operation of our own barge fleet remains suspended. We keep chartering vessels from third parties with a lesser draught, which are able to go at low levels. On the basis of the measures we have taken, we can keep supplying customers. Our in-house low-water task force is continuously evaluating the impacts on deliveries and production,” the company says.
Other mills have transferred cargoes to freight trains. In order to maintain supply chains for coal and ore, private operator Captrain has provided additional transport capacities. Captrain was represented at the recent MBI Stahltag conference with a speaker on the overall potential of train operators for steel mills.
Since August, Captrain has been running three to four extra journeys per week between the port of Wilhelmshaven and the Ruhr, thus adding 4,000 tonnes of coal. It furthermore added four-to-five journeys for coke transport between Germany and France, with a total of 2,000t/week, the firm says in a statement.
Other local operators, too, have lifted their capacities for steel mills, according to information service Verkehrs-Rundschau. Rhein-Cargo, for example, is running additional trains for iron ore transports from Rotterdam to Hüttenwerke Krupp-Mannesmann (HKM) in Duisburg on the Ruhr.
Most scrap transport that needed to find alternatives will have been transferred to “trucks, trucks, trucks,” Sebastian Will of recyclers organisation BVSE told MBI Stahltag delegates.
The situation on the waterways has given the truck transport prices another push, in addition to the earlier increases during the year. Rates could inch towards €100/tonne ($111/t) for border-crossing steel routes like Italy-Ruhr, some market players say. According to a manager of a distribution company, the prices by August were still around €80/t. “I have not heard €100/t yet, but I would not be surprised,” he says.
