Around 70 ships remain affected by the closure of a section of the Moselle river in western Germany, disrupting shipments of steel, aluminum and other commodities, according to the federal Waterways and Shipping Administration.
A ship loaded with around 1,500 mt of scrap cargo crashed into Muden lock on Dec. 8 while on its way to Luxembourg, damaging the lock on the Moselle, which is one of the busiest tributaries of the Rhine, said Eric Oehlmann, head of the directorate-general for the administration, known as WSV, in a Dec. 13 statement.
S&P Global Commodity Insights contacted the WSV for an update Dec. 16, but had not yet received a response by the time of publication.
Oehlmann said the WSA Mosel-Saar-Lahn was working to repair the lock damage and find solutions so that the affected ships could leave the Moselle as quickly as possible.
“The collision of a ship with the Muden Moselle lock is a serious incident with significant consequences,” he said. “The collision with the gate shows the great importance of our waterways for the economy and the supply of our society.”
He said the WSV had responded quickly to try keep the consequences for all system partners as low as possible and would be working over the upcoming holidays.
“Intensive work is currently being carried out to find solutions to enable the ships to continue their journey,” Oehlmann said, adding that the gate wings were recovered Dec. 12 and the second inspection lock was installed, with preparations being made to drain the lock chamber with pumps to examine the damage in the lower gate area.
‘Logistical worse-case scenario’
The Saarland arm of WV Stahl, Stahl-Verband-Saar, posted on LinkedIn Dec. 12 that repair work on the damaged lock was expected to take until March 2025, which would disrupt steel and other metal trade flows across Europe.
“The forecast that the Moselle locks in Muden would not be repaired until March 2025 shocked us. In order to limit the economic damage to companies in the Saarland steel industry as much as possible, the repair work must be pushed forward with all its might,” Stahl-Verband-Saar said in the post.
“The failure of the lock leads to a total failure and complete paralysis of the waterways, thus making the delivery of raw materials and the shipment of products on this important transport route impossible. Now we have the logistical worst-case scenario,” it added.
Stahl-Verband-Saar said it had been campaigning for the expansion of Moselle locks for years, as the bottleneck problem was well known.
There had not yet been much impact on the market, with one Benelux scrap recycler telling Commodity Insights there was not much being affected at the moment.
A German scrap recycler also said he had yet had to divert any shipments from the Moselle.
