New Canal To Boost West German Trade

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30936, 17 December 1965, Page 13

New Canal To Boost West German Trade

(N.Z.P.A. -Reuter)

BONN. West Germany is to construct a new inland shipping artery and modernise others in an effort to channel more business into its north-eastern corner.

The trading ports of Hamburg and Lubeck, once thriving ports, have been left somewhat in the cold since World War 11.

The division of Germany severed the traditional links with eastern Europe. The Common Market drained much of the traffic to Rotterdam and the western ports of the continent, while business from neighbouring Scandinavia and Britain has dwindled. Now, the Federal Government and the five northern German states have signed an agreement for a £270 million plan to link the area by canal with the industrial centres of the Ruhr, Hanover, and Brunswick, bypassing the Elbe where it flows into East Germany. At the heart of the plan is a new 70 mile-long, 164ftwide canal running south across the Luneburg heath from the Elbe, near Hamburg, to the Mittelland Canal near Brunswick. It will have

two locks, to overcome a rise of about 214 ft in ground level, and is expected to carry between 12 million and 15 million tons of goods a year. Parallel With Border

To be known as the Elbe Lateral Canal, it will run roughly parallel with the border with East Germany and will relieve shipping of all the problems of the present roundabout route through East Germany, via Magdeburg. Apart from the constant threat that the East Germans may at any time close the present route to Western traffic, the Elbe is only navigable for largish ships on 70 days of the year. Even for small ships, navigation is difficult at certain points. The proposal is not, however, simply a solution im-

posed by problems arising from the division of Germany. The canal was first suggested over 50 years ago as a short cut. It will shorten the distance between Magdeburg and Hamburg by about 37 miles and is considerably cheaper than the navigational alternative of canalising the Elbe. The authorities hope that the new canal will bring through Hamburg both goods travelling between the Common Market and northern Europe, and those being carried between eastern Europe and Western Europe. Existing canals throughout north Germany will be widened and deepened to allow them to take the 1350-ton “Europe Barge," as the proposed standard canal vessel for Common Market countries has come to be known, and so enable them to compete with the efficient canal systems of Belgium and Holland.