Salt intrusion restricts Gent-Terneuzen bulk shipping

The water in the Gent-Terneuzen canal has turned brackish and still. Too salty, too shallow for the bulk carriers that normally haul ore and steel to Ghent's steelworks and chemical plants. This summer, as water levels dropped and salinity spiked, North Sea Port, the cross-border authority managing the 32-kilometre waterway between Belgium and the Netherlands, restricted how deep vessels can sit and partly closed the locks at Terneuzen.

The canal is not closed. It is becoming harder to use at the volumes industry needs.

Less depth, higher bills

A vessel's draft is how deep it sits in the water. When available depth shrinks, ships must carry lighter loads or wait. Every tonne removed from a hold gets spread across the same fixed costs: fuel, crew, port fees.

Germany has measured what this costs. Low water on the Rhine regularly forces vessels to load less cargo, triggering low-water surcharges above 20% (Tagesschau). The 2018 Rhine drought was severe enough to shave roughly 0.4 percentage points off German GDP estimates (FAZ). On the Danube, Romanian barge operators have reported loading at only 40–60% of normal capacity during low water, with one operator citing losses of roughly €6 million in a single year (Știrile ProTV). The cost chain is the same everywhere: less water, lighter ships, higher freight bills.

Salt turns restriction into a double bind

Gent-Terneuzen adds a problem the Rhine doesn't have: salt. A lock is a gated chamber that raises or lowers ships between water levels. Every time a lock cycles, it can push seawater inland. When salt content climbs too far, it threatens farmland irrigation and drinking water.

Water managers face a choice with no good option. Open the locks for ships, and salt creeps toward farms and taps. Restrict lock use to protect freshwater, and freight slows. Hoogheemraadschap Delfland, the Dutch water authority for the region, warned that drought and evaporation are worsening saltwater intrusion risk (Hoogheemraadschap Delfland). Across the border, Flanders' water agency VMM reported that June rainfall brought only "limited recovery" and half of monitored groundwater locations were low to very low for the time of year (VMM).

Rijkswaterstaat, the Dutch public works agency, spells out the trade-off in its own climate assessment: water reserved for drinking, flood control or ecology leaves less available for shipping (Rijkswaterstaat). The European Environment Agency flags the same collision of demands across the continent (EEA).

Who pays

The losses land first on shipowners and the factories they supply. Bulk carriers move raw materials, steel inputs, fertilizer and construction aggregates. These cargoes are heavy, cheap per unit and expensive to reroute by truck. When ships sail lighter, the carrier, the commodity trader or the factory buying the input absorbs the difference.

Rail and trucks can pick up some slack, but not much. Rail handles only about 10% of freight around North Sea Port, and a Belgian-Dutch project to expand rail capacity is still in early stages (The Traveler, Logistiek.be). Road haulage costs more and hits its own congestion limits.

No public data yet shows how many vessels were delayed at Terneuzen, how many tonnes were rerouted, or whether any factory cut output. This canal restriction is a warning, not a proven economic shock. But the capacity-loss mechanism is already tested on the Rhine and the Danube, and the climate trend feeding it is not reversing.