20th Annual General Meeting of the SGEG on March 15, 2025 in Basel

Following the advice of our president in the invitation to the AGM, I arrived early in Basel to have a look around the harbour railway facilities and search for old locomotives parked there. With a stiff breeze and cool temperatures, it wasn’t really pleasant…

Afterwards, people were very happy to enter the sheltered and heated rooms of the harbour museum (Hafenmuseum), which became even more tempting with coffee and croissants.

As the weather forecast and the rain radar had predicted a break in the rain for the next hour, but rain was forecast in the remaining time, we decided to change the order and take the harbour tour first before listening to the lecture and visiting the museum.
Our guide wass the museum’s director Rolf Schlebach. He grew up on a ship on the Rhine, but as a die-hard Basel native he is also a drum maker. On the tour, he drew our attention to various interesting buildings and processes, which he supplemented with exciting background information and figures thanks to his in-depth knowledge, even without PowerPoint slides.

Rolf Schlebach gave us an exciting presentation on the importance of Rhine shipping and Basel’s Rhine harbour as a gateway to Switzerland with films and pictures. Here are a few interesting facts:

• The Rhine is 1232 kilometer long from its source to the sea, with kilometre 0 in Constance being defined for shipping. Basel is at kilometre 170 and Rotterdam at kilometre 1000.
• From Basel to the sea, there are 240 metres of elevation to overcome. In addition to the natural gradient, this is done in 10 floodgates.
  These locks are usually 12 or 24 metres wide and 185 metres long, while the usual ships are 11.45 metres wide. So there is not much room for manoeuvring!
• The ships typically travel between Basel and the seaports, taking 50 hours downstream from Basel to Rotterdam and 100 hours upstream. When travelling downhill, they travel at 20 km/h, when travelling uphill at 10 km/h. If you add the loading and unloading times, a turnaround takes 10 to 14 days, travelling around the clock.
• Today, the majority of transport is carried out by container ships. Because of the bridges, a maximum of 4 containers can be stacked on top of each other up to Strasbourg. From there to Basel, only 3 containers are possible, and if you want to pass the centre bridge in Basel, there are only 2 containers, or half the capacity.
• Pushed convoys are often formed. A push boat pushes several unmotorised but steerable barges in front of it.
  In the past, motorless barges pulled behind a ship with ropes were also seen.
• Today, the hulls of new Rhine barges are built almost exclusively in China. Several units are shipped together to Europe, where they are then completed with the superstructure, engine and accommodation.
• Navigation on the Rhine is based on the Mannheim Convention of 1868, on the basis of which the Rhine was made navigable with standardised rules and made usable for all neighbouring countries.
• The first passenger steamboat arrived in Basel in 1832. At that time, the Rhine was not canalised and always sought new routes after floods. Navigation was repeatedly interrupted and therefore unreliable.
• Since the closure of Basel’s first Rhine harbour, St. Johann, in 2010, three Rhine harbours on 148 hectares have remained in operation in the two city parts of Basel.
• Harbour basin 1 in Kleinhünigen was opened on 2 August 1922, the planning took place during the war years!
• The Rhine harbour at Birsfelden and the Au harbour at Muttenz were built between 1937 and 1940.
• Almost parallel to this, the construction of harbour basin 2 took place from 1941 to 1946. Unemployed people dug out the 70-metre-long and 10-metre-deep basin by hand using pickaxes, shovels and wheelbarrows. The excavated material forms the railway embankment between Muttenz and Basel.
• The Westquai container terminal was opened in 1981.
• In 2008, all the harbours were merged and have since operated under the name Port of Switzerland.

• Every year, 5 to 6 million tonnes of goods are handled in the Rhine ports of Basel, which corresponds to around 10% of Swiss imports.
• 40% of all mineral oils reach Switzerland via the Rhine and the port of Muttenz
• 4000 to 6000 tonnes of aluminium per week are brought to Switzerland via the Rhine, mostly from India
• 125,000 containers were transhipped in Basel in 2022, which is one in four container imports
• Speaking of containers: did you know that Switzerland is the largest container nation in the world thanks to MSC, which is based in Geneva?
• Its container ship MSC Michel Cappellini, built in 2023, is 399.9 metres long and 61.5 metres wide and can transport up to 24346 20’ containers.
• However, the majority of MSC’s ships are not operating under the Swiss flag.
• Incidentally, merchant flags are rectangular in accordance with international regulations. The Swiss national flag, on the other hand, is square, a unique feature worldwide…
• The Basel Port Railway is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Port of Switzerland and operates around 50 kilometres of track. Around 13,000 trains run every year.
• The trimodal container terminal Basel Nord and a hydrogen hub in Muttenz are planned for the future.

After the lecture, there was still some time to visit the museum with its many interesting and detailed ship models and the large model of Basel’s harbours, which was built for the 1939 national exhibition and has been given a great place of honour here. It provides a nice overview to help us better categorise what we have heard geographically. Unfortunately, the time for the museum visit was too short and there was not enough time to take photos of some of the ship models during the guided tour.

After the museum visit, we walked a few steps along the meadow to the nearby «Schiff» restaurant, where lunch and our general meeting took place.

Once the general assembly was over, we had to hurry back to harbour basin 1, where two «Rhy» taxis were waiting for us for a final highlight. The group was divided between the two boats and the skippers explained the sights and procedures in Basel’s harbours to us again in typical Basel dialect. As it was Saturday and there were no ships on the Rhine, we were even given permission to sail into harbour basin 2.

The supporting programme for our 20th Annual General Meeting was very varied and interesting. Many thanks to our guide and organiser Rolf Schlebach, to the Harbour Museum for their hospitality, to Restaurant Schiff for the food and the room for the General Meeting and also to Roger Bennet for the idea and implementation.

 

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