Shipping in a less predictable climate
This summer, one of Europe's most important trade routes came close to a standstill.
Water levels on the Rhine fell to their lowest since records began in 1880. At the river's shallowest points, barges could load only a fraction of their normal cargo, and for a time the river was effectively split in two. Goods that normally travel cheaply by water, including chemicals, steel, coal, fuel and grain, were pushed onto costlier rail and road, or simply left to wait. The head of Germany's inland shipping association called it a possible once-in-a-century event.
The trouble is that once-in-a-century events are starting to arrive rather more often.
The Rhine ran critically low in 2018, again in 2022, and now in 2026, each time a little earlier in the year. It is not only the Rhine, either. Drought has repeatedly forced the Panama Canal to cut the number of ships it lets through, disrupting schedules for trades on the other side of the world. Heat, drought, flooding and storms are increasingly interfering with the waterways, ports and timings that global trade quietly depends on.
For anyone running a shipping business, this points to something uncomfortable. The environment we plan around is becoming less predictable.
Shipping runs on assumptions. That a route will be open. That a canal will take a certain number of vessels. That a port will turn a ship around in roughly the usual time. That a voyage will take about as long as it did last year. These assumptions sit underneath every schedule, every quote and every contract.
When they begin to wobble, the businesses that feel it most acutely are often the smaller ones. A large operator has the scale to absorb a surcharge, reroute cargo or carry a little extra slack. A smaller company working on thinner margins has far less room, and a single disrupted voyage can swallow a whole month's profit on a trade.
You cannot control the weather. But you can change how you plan for it.
The shift is from fixed assumptions to better information and faster decisions.
In practice, that means seeing disruption coming rather than reacting once it has already arrived. It means knowing where your business is exposed, which routes, which cargoes, which customers, before conditions turn. It means having alternatives thought through in advance, whether that is a shift to rail or road, a different routing, or simply an early and honest conversation with a customer about timing. And it means being able to weigh the cost of those options quickly, while the situation is still moving.
This is where data and AI genuinely help, though not in the way the hype tends to suggest. AI will not tell you when the wind will blow or the rain will come. What it can do is help a small team make sense of a great deal of fast-changing information at once: pulling signals from many sources, flagging where you are exposed, summarising conditions as they shift, and running quick comparisons of routes and costs. It does the legwork, so your people can spend their attention on the decision.
The aim is not to remove human judgement. In a situation like a disrupted voyage, judgement is exactly what matters. The aim is to make sure that judgement is well informed, and that it can be exercised quickly, rather than buried under a scramble to gather basic facts.
None of this requires a grand transformation programme. Resilience is rarely built in one dramatic move. It is built by not being caught flat-footed: by understanding your exposure, keeping a little flexibility in how you operate, and giving your team the information they need to act before a problem becomes a crisis.
The climate is changing what shipping can rely on. The businesses that cope best will not be the ones with the most advanced technology. They will be the ones that plan honestly for a less certain world, and make sure they can see the next disruption coming a little sooner than they saw the last.
If you are thinking about where your own business is most exposed, and how better information could help you plan for it, that is exactly the kind of conversation we enjoy having.
