The top three  performers globally were Maersk Line, Hamburg Süd and Hanjin, which marks the first time Hanjin has made it into the top trio of global performers. However, using a more stringent measurement of only arriving the same day or the day before - as opposed to the standard +/-1 day - APL takes the number 3 position for the 5th time in 2012.

Despite the global record high performance, most individual carriers did not perform in line with their own best performance in 2012, which says two things. First, the improvement is a systemic improvement across the industry. Second, there is indeed the possibility of further improvements. Had all carriers performed in line with their own best global performance in 2012, the schedule reliability would be further improved to 87 percent.

In the main east-west trades, reliability increased by 1.7 percent from Asia to Europe and by 1.4 percent on the trans-Pacific eastbound trade. This development was particularly driven by MSC, who improved schedule reliability by 10 percent for the Asia-North Europe trade, and by 11 percent on the trans-Pacific eastbound trade. This means that MSC now ranks 7th out of the 20 carriers measured on the Asia-North Europe trade.

The report has extended the coverage to take in the trades between Asia and South America, where performance also increased on all trades in October - most notably for the trade from East Coast South America to Asia, where reliability increased from 63 percent to 73 percent. The highest schedule reliability is seen between West Coast South America and Asia at 88 percent eastbound and 91 percent westbound.

The Global Liner Performance report is issued monthly by SeaIntel Maritime Analysis and measures more than 10,000 vessel arrivals monthly across 32 trade lanes identified across 200 ports.

Source: SeaIntel Maritime Analysis