HAMBURG, May 13 (Reuters) – Rain in the past week has raised water levels on the river \u200cRhine in Germany enabling cargo vessels to sail with \u200cmore freight after shallow water hindered shipping in early May, commodity \u200btraders said on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Dry weather in April meant the river became too shallow for vessels to sail fully loaded. Shallow water means vessel operators impose surcharges on freight rates \u200cto compensate for \u2060vessels not sailing fully loaded, increasing costs for cargo owners. It also means loads must \u2060be spread among several vessels sailing part loaded, also increasing costs.<\/p>\n
Rain in the last week now draining into the \u200briver means \u200bwater levels have risen and \u200bhave reached normal levels \u200callowing full loads in northern river stretches around Duisburg after some vessels sailed only half full last week, traders said.<\/p>\n
Further south at Cologne and the chokepoint of Kaub vessels can sail 70-80% full, traders said.<\/p>\n
But water at \u200cKaub could return to levels allowing \u200bfull loads in coming days \u200bas rain drains into \u200bthe river, they said.<\/p>\n
The Rhine is an \u200cimportant shipping route for commodities \u200bsuch as grains, \u200bminerals, ores, chemicals, coal and oil products, including heating oil.<\/p>\n
German companies faced supply bottlenecks and production problems \u200bin summer 2022 \u200cafter a drought led to unusually low water \u200blevels on the river.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Michael Hogan in \u200bHamburg, Editing by Keith Weir)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HAMBURG, May 13 (Reuters) – Rain in the past week has raised water levels on the river \u200cRhine…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13218,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[15021,15024,5,15023,109,15022],"class_list":{"0":"post-13317","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-germany","8":"tag-cargo-vessels","9":"tag-freight-rates","10":"tag-germany","11":"tag-river-rhine","12":"tag-shallow-water","13":"tag-water-levels"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13317"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13317\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13218"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}