Ocean Oct 10, 2026 · 8 min read

German port strikes are off, but the low Rhine is still holding up barges

German port strikes are off. The Rhine is still too low for full barges. Dockworkers’ union ver.di has accepted a 3.4% pay rise for about 11,000 workers at six German ports, including Hamburg and Bremerhaven. That ends the strike threat for now, though employers still have to approve the deal. We think the river is now the bigger problem. The Rhine gauge at Kaub read 8 cm on 10 October, according to federal waterways data. Barge operator Contargo now charges up to €1,280 per laden 40-foot box when Kaub is that low, and its barges averaged 56-hour waits at Rotterdam this week. Our call: low-water surcharges stay through mid-November.

German port strike threat ends with a 3.4% deal, but the Rhine has fallen below its August record
Dockworkers at six German seaports have accepted a 3.4% pay rise, backdated to 1 August. That ends the threat of more strikes at Hamburg, Bremen, Bremerhaven, Emden, Brake and Wilhelmshaven. The deal covers about 11,000 workers, according to VerkehrsRundschau, citing the dpa news agency. The union, ver.di, accepted it after a member survey. The employers’ body, ZDS (the Central Association of German Seaport Companies), still has to sign off.
That is good news for the North Europe peak season. But in our view it is the smaller story. The bigger risk for cargo moving into and out of inland Germany this autumn is the Rhine. The river at its key choke point is lower now than it was in August, when it set a record. The barge network that feeds Germany’s industrial belt from Rotterdam and Antwerp is running on surcharges and long queues.

What the dockers agreed

According to The Loadstar, the deal gives a 3.4% wage rise for the next year, backdated to 1 August. It adds €200 to holiday pay. Dockers at high-volume container terminals also get a €416 increase in their annual lump sum from 1 January. VerkehrsRundschau reports the deal runs for one year and was reached in the fourth round of talks.
The gap between the two sides was wide at the start. Ver.di asked for 8.2% on a one-year contract, according to dpa. The employers offered 5.1% spread over roughly a year and a half, and the union said most members rejected it in a survey.
Then came the warning strikes. These are short, legal stoppages German unions use during talks. All six ports stopped for 24 hours on 18 August. A 48-hour strike followed in Hamburg from 2 September, with stoppages in Bremen and Lower Saxony running to the Friday evening, according to VerkehrsRundschau.
“It was a difficult round, but the bottom line was acceptable,” ver.di said, according to The Loadstar. It added a caveat: “However, the employers’ side still has to approve the result.”
Compare that with last year. In July 2025, the same two sides agreed 3.1% for 12 months with no strikes, VerkehrsRundschau reported at the time. That deal came in the first round of talks, and both sides set a four-week declaration period before it became final. This year took four rounds and two waves of stoppages to land just 0.3 points higher. We read that as a union that wanted a fight and an employer side that held its line.
The ports themselves are busy but improving. Kuehne + Nagel puts yard utilisation, meaning the share of container stacking space in use, at 90% in Bremerhaven, 80–85% in Hamburg and 65% in Wilhelmshaven, according to The Loadstar. Xeneta’s liner data shows ship waiting times improving since early September, the same report says. Bremerhaven at 90% has little room for another shock. Without a strike, it should keep working through the backlog.

Why the river matters more

Kaub is a small town on the Middle Rhine. It sits at the river’s shallowest stretch, and ships carrying freight from the North Sea ports to south-west Germany have to pass it. The gauge there is the number the barge industry watches. It is a reference reading, not the real depth of the water. Skippers use it to work out how deep they can load.
Drewry’s Eirik Hooper told The Loadstar the Kaub gauge hit 6 cm in August, the lowest since records began in 1880. He said that level still leaves about 1.2 metres of navigable channel. “So barges either sailed only a fraction loaded, or not at all,” he said.
The scale matters. One 1,500-tonne barge carries what 60 trucks would, according to Drewry. Hooper also cited credible estimates that the drought, had it lasted into September, could have cut about a third of a percentage point off German GDP for the quarter.
It did last. And it got worse.

What the gauges say now

Germany’s federal waterways agency publishes live gauge data. Its provisional readings put Kaub at between 18 cm and 36 cm in mid-September. By early October it was falling again. The gauge read minus 2 cm late on 7 October and stayed there into the next morning. On the afternoon of 10 October it read 8 cm.
A reading below zero does not mean the river is dry. The gauge’s zero point is a fixed height, set at 67.669 metres above sea level, and the channel is deeper than the number suggests. But the reading is what barge operators price on. When it drops, loads drop, and so does the number of boxes each sailing can carry. At these levels, Hooper’s August description still fits: barges sail part-loaded or stay put.
For context, the agency’s own record low before this year was 25 cm, set on 22 October 2018. The Cologne gauge read 60 cm on 10 October, below the 69 cm low the agency lists from 23 October 2018. Further downstream, Contargo showed Emmerich, near the Dutch border, at minus 6 cm on the same day.
Contargo runs container barges and inland terminals along the Rhine. Its notice to customers this week says its transport obligation stops once Kaub falls to 80 cm or less. It says it is still trying to move containers. But it warns that “we may be forced to implement extensive operational measures at short notice”.
Its surcharges show what that costs. When Kaub reads 40 cm or less, the surcharge is €1,075 per laden 20-foot container and €1,280 per 40-foot. At Cologne, the 20-foot surcharge runs up to €1,010. Contargo says the increase on past low-water periods “is largely due to the significant rise in ship charter costs”. In other words, barge owners are charging more to rent out the few boats that can still sail.
The queue at Rotterdam is getting longer, not shorter. Contargo reported average barge waits of 44 hours at Antwerp and 43 hours at Rotterdam on 23 September. By 30 September, Rotterdam was at 54 hours. On 6 October it was 56 hours, with Antwerp at 36.
Maersk has told customers that “there is a possibility that conditions may deteriorate to a point where barge transport is no longer operationally feasible”, according to The Loadstar. The carrier is keeping its low-water Rhine surcharges in place.
The near-term outlook is flat. Contargo’s forecast for 10 to 12 October has Kaub between minus 1 cm and 12 cm. That is a long way below the 80 cm line where its normal service terms apply.

What it means for forwarders and shippers

First, price inland German moves at the top of the surcharge table. If a box is going by barge to a terminal south of Koblenz, assume €1,075 or €1,280 on top of the base rate. Quote it as a separate line so the customer sees it fall away when the water comes back.
Second, watch free time at Rotterdam and Antwerp. Free time is the number of days a box can sit at the terminal or with the shipper before demurrage and detention charges start. Barge waits of more than two days eat into it. In our view, shippers who do not ask now for extra free time will pay for it later.
Third, expect rail and truck to tighten. If one barge equals 60 trucks, it does not take many cancelled sailings to fill the road. We expect truck and rail rates from Rotterdam and Antwerp to the Rhine-Main and Rhine-Neckar regions to rise while the water stays low. That is our view, not a published rate.
Fourth, take another look at German ports. With the strike risk gone, Hamburg and Bremerhaven with rail into southern Germany are a more reliable backup than they were a month ago. Bremerhaven’s 90% yard utilisation is the catch. Routing more cargo there will not be free.
Fifth, read the contracts. Contargo’s own terms show that its duty to carry ends at a set gauge level. Other barge operators and carriers will have similar clauses. Shippers who assumed a fixed inland rate may find it was never fixed.

Our call

On the ports: the employers will approve the deal within four weeks, the same declaration period last year’s deal went through. We do not expect another German port strike before the next pay round opens in summer 2027.
On the river: we expect Kaub to stay below 80 cm until at least mid-November. Low-water surcharges from Contargo and Maersk will stay on through November. Rotterdam barge waits will stay above 40 hours through the end of October. The 2018 low came on 22 October. This year’s low has already arrived earlier and gone deeper. A real recovery needs sustained rain in the Alps and the German uplands, and until that shows up in the Kaub readings, the surcharge is part of the rate.

Sources