Very bad economic news. A barge loaded with scrap metal hit the gates of a lock on the Moselle near Müden, a town located just before Koblenz in Germany. The events took place on Sunday. Both gate leaves were seriously damaged.
Consequence: navigation on the canalized river is interrupted towards the major ports of the North Sea. For how long? Until the end of March! It's quite simple, as the Ministry of Mobility summarized on Monday, the Moselle is today cut in two, the Müden lock has transformed into an insurmountable obstacle.
All the major ports along the river will now have to organize themselves and the companies passing through these logistical nodes will find other solutions. And the quantities of goods are far from negligible. The port of Mertert handles tons of steel produced by Luxembourg steelworks, not to mention the scrap metal used to manufacture beams and sheet piles in electric furnaces and which passes through this precious industrial site located on the water's edge.
A little further on the French side, the port of Metz is the largest grain port in France with its impressive storage silos which have a capacity of 600 000 tons. It will also have to organize itself to supply global markets and the ports of northern Europe open to the world.
In 2022, when drought caused the water level to drop, the port suffered. “To replace a boat, you need 60 trucks,” those responsible for the site reminded local media. In 2023, nearly seven million tonnes of goods were transported on the Moselle by around 4 500 boats. Do the math…
The accident in Müden is a real blow for this canalized Moselle which recently celebrated its sixtieth anniversary. It is also a tile for businesses that rely on this economical and more environmentally friendly means of transport than trucks. The entire logistics chain needs to be reorganized. Let's hope that the train will do well… we already have far too many trucks on our roads.
