"River vs. Ship" part 2

Everybody “wants something from the Danube“: freight shipping companies, environmentalists, politicians as well as the economic sector. But the river can’t please everybody. Part one of our two-part article of wieninternational.at looked at the Danube from a historical and political point of view. Part two presents views from shipping companies, environmentalists and businesses have to say about the Danube.

On behalf of  freight shipping companies wieninternational.at quotes Valdet Farizi of Multinaut Donaulogistik, part of Imperial Shipping Group / Imperial Reederei, who is responsible for freighting services in Vienna. Imperial Shipping Group has an annual freight volume of 60 million tons is transported by a fleet of about 200 company-owned and approximately 500 chartered vessels via rivers, lakes and seas. “Practically nothing is done about the Danube as a waterway. Policy-makers could definitely show more commitment”, says Farizi. “Along the entire shipping route to Constanta there are several sections of one to two kilometres in length requiring ships to make a detour, e.g. via the Borcea, a branch of the Danube in Romania (causing a delay of one day) or making it necessary to unload a ship and distribute its cargo over three vessels to facilitate navigation in shallow water." Mr. Farizi mentions Serbian, Hungarian and Romanian places.


Schaufler, a company based in Ybbs, is active in the recycling industry. Schaufler-Metalle ships up to 5,000 tons per month to Turkey. Mr. Weichinger calculated that it would be worthwhile to have a company-owned port and had a 60,000-square-metre cargo port (including the necessary infrastructure) built. “Indeed, a recycling enterprise should operate in the most environmentally friendly way. But the inadequate navigability of the Danube river poses a problem. We have to use trucks frequently, and this also results in additional costs of up to 50,000 euros per month!“

The Korneuburg-based company “Agrar-Speicher“ faces similar difficulties. Its manager Jürgen Heidenreich is annoyed about the fact that contrary to their promises “policy-makers have not made any investments for several decades”. “Uncertainty poses a major problem to us. We know the freight rate for transporting cargo from Vienna to Rotterdam when the water level is normal. But if the journey has to be interrupted or the vessel has to be re-loaded or in the worst case both, the cost calculation becomes uncontrollable.“

On behalf of environmental protection NGOs, wieninternational.at quotes Jurrien Westerhof, energy spokesperson of the environmental organisation Greenpeace, the discussion about deepening the riverbed of the Danube for cargo ships does not go far enough.“The building sector has a very powerful lobby in Brussels. Of course it struggles to get as many contracts for large-scale projects as possible – the deepening of the riverbed of the Danube would practically be an almost ideal project, it involves a lot of construction work and a lot of money.“ Westerhof believes that problems such as those of the companies Schaufler and Agrar-Speicher (see below) are exceptions: “I think that it is wrong to say that cargo transport on the Danube is environmentally friendly because it reduces truck traffic. There is an existing panacea to remove trucks from the road, i.e. the railways.“  Greenpeace is afraid of a domino effect if the Danube was dredged to deepen the riverbed in Austria. This measure would not make sense unless the southern Danube countries participated in the project. And this would pose a tremendous threat to the flora and fauna of the still natural or nearly natural Danube river section from the Lobau to the Black Sea. “Due to the numerous barrages, the deepening of the riverbed is already problematic at this stage. One of the problems is the drying up of wetlands, and to date no solutions have been found.“

Quoting mobility experts, the Development Centre for Ship Technology and Transport Systems for the German Federal Ministry of Transport, Building and Urban Development examined whether the navigability of rivers can be improved by developing “river-compatible” inland navigation vessels: “Based on state-of-the-art technology, the innovative measures analysed will lead to higher production and operating costs. To cover the extra investment and operating costs, freight rates would have to be increased to a level that is not competitive even after the introduction of the truck toll (...). New innovative vessels would, however, offer only inadequate competitive advantages. While innovative technical measures could help to use the existing waterway infrastructure more efficiently, they will not make up for inadequate infrastructure.“