German rail freight and passenger services suffered six more days of disruption this week after a train drivers union rejected a third pay offer from state-owned rail operator Deutsche Bahn AG and asked freight train drivers to halt work from 6 p.m. local time on Jan. 23 until Jan. 29.
The Gewerkschaft Deutscher Lokomotivführer (GDL) union also asked passenger train drivers to strike from 2 a.m. on Jan. 24, also for six days. According to a Financial Times (FT)report, cited by Bloomberg, Deutsche Bahn as of Jan. 24 was still able to operate a skeleton service, with about one in five long-distance trains running.
The extended strike follows a three-day walkout earlier this month. GDL is seeking a 35-hour working week on full pay, down from the current 38 hours, but the proposal has been rejected by Deutsche Bahn management.
A spokesperson for K+S Group told Green Markets on Jan. 25 that the rail strikes were affecting the company, as Deutsche Bahn is the company’s main rail contractor.
“But we are able to conduct some transports and/or are able to use other rail companies, or shift to truck transports,” he said. “Fortunately, we currently have sufficient storage capacity at our production sites. Therefore, from today’s perspective, we do not expect any production stoppages at our sites.”
K+S in November said it had factored the risk of possible rail strikes into its full-year 2023 EBITDA guidance (GM Nov. 17, 2023). The company warned that rail disruptions could affect the transportation of potash and salt products from its production sites to the ports. K+S as of November was forecasting a FY2023 EBITDA of €600-€800 million.
K+S also confirmed that the rail strike risk, besides other uncertainties, had been factored into the company’s full-year sales volumes projection for its Agriculture customer segment. The company in November said it was expecting sales volumes for all products in the segment to range from 7.0-7.4 million mt in 2023, down from 7.11 million mt in 2022.
BASF SE warned that the six-day strike will have more of an impact on the movement of the company’s products than previous strikes.
According to a Dow Jones report, citing a statement from Uwe Liebelt, President of European Verbund Sites at BASF, the company in normal circumstances handles about 30% of its transports by rail. Due to the strike, however, it has been forced to shift to trucks on a large scale, Liebelt said.
BASF said it had taken measures to cushion the effects of the strike on production sites and customers, but added that its operations were still recovering from adverse weather and a previous rail strike earlier in January.
According to a Financial Times report, cited by Bloomberg, the transport of raw materials between BASF’s plants in Ludwigshafen, Schwarzheide, and Antwerp as of Jan. 24 had not been affected as the company uses its own locomotives and drivers.
But BASF’s customers are affected, according to the report. Products are usually shipped from Ludwigshafen in trains operated by Deutsche Bahn’s subsidiary DB Cargo, but these are now no longer running. BASF said it was seeking to switch to trucks instead.
BASF’s employees, many of whom use trains to get to work in Ludwigshafen, are also affected, the company said. The German chemicals major declined to disclose whether run rates at any of its sites have been impacted by the strike.
Germany’s Transport Minister Volker Wissing called the strike “unacceptable,” and accused GDL of refusing to negotiate. The country’s BDI industry lobby has warned the six-day strike could trigger losses to the German economy of as much as €1 billion (approximately $1.1 billion at current exchange rates).