Salt Squeezes Gent-Terneuzen Shipping

The water in the Gent-Terneuzen canal has become brackish and still: too salty, and too shallow, for the bulk carriers that usually bring ore and steel inputs to Ghent's steelworks and chemical plants. This summer, as water levels fell and salinity rose, North Sea Port, the cross-border authority that manages the 32-kilometre waterway between Belgium and the Netherlands, limited vessel draft and partly closed the locks at Terneuzen.

The canal has not shut. It is simply becoming less reliable at the volumes heavy industry needs.

Less depth, higher bills

A vessel's draft is the depth it needs in the water. When that depth is no longer available, ships either wait or carry less. The problem is not complicated: the same journey still has to cover fuel, crew and port fees, but those costs are spread across fewer tonnes.

Germany has already put figures on this. Low water on the Rhine regularly forces vessels to load less cargo, with low-water surcharges rising above 20% (Tagesschau). The 2018 Rhine drought was bad enough to cut about 0.4 percentage points from German GDP estimates (FAZ). On the Danube, Romanian barge operators have reported loading only 40–60% of normal capacity during low water, with one operator citing losses of around €6 million in a single year (Știrile ProTV).

The chain is familiar to any island economy that depends on ports: less usable water, lighter vessels, dearer freight.

Salt turns restriction into a double bind

Gent-Terneuzen has a problem the Rhine does not: salt. A lock is the gated chamber that raises or lowers ships between different water levels. Each time it operates, seawater can be pushed further inland. Once salinity rises too far, it starts threatening irrigation for farmland and drinking water supplies.

That leaves water managers with a choice Malta understands well, even if our scale is different. Keep the locks moving for commerce, and salt moves towards farms and taps. Restrict lock use to protect freshwater, and freight slows. Hoogheemraadschap Delfland, the Dutch regional water authority, has warned that drought and evaporation are increasing the risk of saltwater intrusion (Hoogheemraadschap Delfland). Across the border, Flanders' water agency VMM said June rainfall brought only "limited recovery", with half of monitored groundwater locations low to very low for the time of year (VMM).

Rijkswaterstaat, the Dutch public works agency, is plain about the trade-off in its own climate assessment: water kept for drinking, flood control or ecology is water no longer available for shipping (Rijkswaterstaat). The European Environment Agency points to the same collision across the continent (EEA).

Who pays

The first bill lands on shipowners and on the factories they supply. Bulk carriers move raw materials, steel inputs, fertiliser and construction aggregates. These cargoes are heavy, relatively cheap per unit, and costly to shift onto trucks. When ships sail lighter, the carrier, the commodity trader or the factory buying the input absorbs the difference.

Rail and trucks can take some of the pressure, but not enough to replace the canal. Rail carries only about 10% of freight around North Sea Port, and a Belgian-Dutch project to expand rail capacity is still at an early stage (The Traveler, Logistiek.be). Road haulage costs more and quickly runs into congestion.

There is still no public data showing how many vessels have been delayed at Terneuzen, how many tonnes were rerouted, or whether any factory cut output. For now, this is a warning rather than a measured economic shock. But the mechanism is no longer theoretical. It has already been tested on the Rhine and the Danube, and the climate pressure behind it is not easing.