BASF addresses low water shipping

STAY AFLOAT

INLAND WATERWAYS • BASF MOVES A LOT OF PRODUCT ON THE RHINE BUT VARIABILITY IN WATER LEVELS CAUSES PROBLEMS. IT HAS TAKEN SOME STEPS TO IMPROVE RELIABILITY

BASF’S HEADQUARTERS PLANT sits on the banks of the Rhine in Ludwigshafen, Germany. That location, pictured below, gives it easy access by waterway to the main trading and storage hubs in the ARA region and a head start in the modal shift to move freight off the roads. However, in recent years, low water events on the Rhine have caused disruption to the planned movement of goods, which have been compounded by issues on the rail network.

So as to achieve some level of dependability, BASF and its logistics partners have been looking at how to design and develop inland waterway vessels capable of coping with low water events, particularly following the extreme drought in the summer and autumn of 2018. As a first step, BASF has since 2019 chartered in a number of vessels able of transporting significant volumes even in low water, in partnership with various shipping companies. This measure has proved successful and, BASF says, is continuing to be developed. In addition, the company expanded its re-cooling capacity, developed a digital early warning system to give alerts on likely low water levels, in concert with the Federal Institute of Hydrology, and added flexibility to its loading points at selected production plants, allowing it to switch to rail transport when needed.

More fundamentally, BASF is planning to expand its inland waterway fleet with specially designed vessels. One gas tanker has already been built and delivered, operated by HGK Shipping; in collaboration with external partners and Stolt Tankers, a low-water chemical tanker is currently under construction; and another low-water specialised vessel is currently being built by GEFO.

“With these three ships, we can once again significantly improve the security of supply and thus the competitiveness of the site, even during critical low-water events,” says Dr Uwe Liebelt, president of European Verbund sites at BASF.

PARTNERS IN DESIGN The GEFO vessel is designed for the carriage of special products and will have eight stainless steel tanks, two of which will have special coatings. The 110-metre long tanker, to be named Canaletto, is due for delivery in mid-2022. HGK’s gas tanker, Gas94, is already in service; this has a hull form optimised for buoyancy through a sophisticated arrangement of components such as cargo tanks and propulsion technology, which also makes it wider than usual gas tankers. It is capable of carrying a 200-tonne cargo even when water levels at Kalb are 30 cm.

BASF calls the Stolt tanker “the flagship of the new low-water vessels”. It too can pass Kalb in 30 cm of water with a cargo of 650 tonnes and even at medium levels of low water will be able to carry some 2,500 tonnes, twice as much as conventional inland vessels. It will be 135 m long and 17.5 m wide, with a lightweight construction and ten stainless steel cargo tanks, and is due for delivery in late 2022. “We took the initiative for this development in 2018, because there was no such vessel available on the market,” says Liebelt. “I am pleased that we were able to win the shipping company Stolt for the implementation.”

“In all three cases, we worked closely with shipping companies and external partners and were able to develop custom-fit models with them that exactly meet our needs,” says Barbara Hoyer, vice-president, Domestic Delivery Services at BASF. www.basf.com