Running throughout six countries, the Rhine River serves as a main gateway for shipping between southern and northern Europe. Each day, thousands of vessels carrying commodities like grain, coal, and oil transit through the river’s winding waterways.
After a bout of severely dry weather hit in June, water on the river fell below normal levels and remained shallow as of September, according to Reuters. This has resulted in various challenges, including vessels sailing with cargo below their maximum capacities, surcharges on freight rates, and delivery delays.
Genscape Vesseltracker’s two new antennas along the Rhine in Karlsruhe and Wesseling provide valuable data that can be leveraged to better prepare for these and similiar challenges for maritime shipping.
Karlsruhe, Germany:
Located in the middle of the Rhine, the Port of Karlsuhe is one of the main transport hubs in Germany. It is home to EnBW Energy’s Rheinhafen-Dampfkraftwerk Karlsruhe (RDK) steam power plant, whose coal-fired block, RDK 8, is an essential component of Germany’s energy supply. The plant utilizes technology provided by General Electric, and scored a world record in 2016 when it achieved a 47.5 percent net thermal efficiency while producing 912 megawatts of electricity. In order for the company to continue to generate this amount of electricity and district heating from hard coal, the plant must rely on shipments of coal from various locations. According to eKapija, less than two percent of the plant’s coal supply comes from Germany, while the rest is imported by river from South Africa, Columbia, Poland, and the U.S. Importing the coal is more cost-effective than using locally-sourced coal by about 20 percent, and nearly 1,000 ships are unloaded in Karlsruhe annually.
The more granular data that results from Genscape Vesseltracker’s enhanced antenna coverage means that our data offers better insights into these product movements with arrival and departure data. Considering the uncertainty of recent water levels, this data can be crucial for coal traders and analysts to understand what is coming to and from the port. If there is a traffic delay due to a ship grounding, which is extremely common along the narrow river ways, this data can be valuable to determining when the congestion has cleared.
Wesseling, Germany
The Port of Wesseling is situated close to Royal Dutch Shell’s Rheinland refinery, one of Germany’s largest, which processes more than 15 million tons of crude oil every year. With current Rhine water levels hindering a vessel’s ability to transport cargo at maximum capacity, Genscape’s Rhine Oil Barge Report offers real transparency into import levels here. It also provides clients with alerts on major events, such as the refinery’s crude distillation fire on August 22 that stopped production and led to increased imports of gasoil the following week.
The report is produced using Genscape Vesseltracker’s AIS data. The new antenna in Wesseling collects information that can be used to follow the journey of barges loading or discharging at the refinery. This allows Genscape to give accurately estimated true volumes of refined product flows in Germany.
The data also provides a new level of detail for logistic managers to better plan for cargo arrivals in this area weeks ahead. Genscape Vesseltracker’s alerting tool sends updates as the vessel passes key points along the river or if it has been delayed by things such as low water levels.
Genscape Vesseltracker’s Antenna Partners receive full access to all AIS antenna data and information from our ship database, including vessel owners and managers, and technical specifications. We are always working to expand our network, so if you are interested in becoming a Genscape Vesseltracker antenna partner, please let us know here!