Six of the 10 trades covered recorded month-on-month on-time improvements in November, but worse performances in each of the three East-West trades and in the Asia-South America route - the only North-South trade to decline - dragged down the overall reliability performance. The average deviation from the sailing schedule was 0.8 days.

Eight of the 19 “Top 20” carriers measured scored an average on-time performance of 80 percent or higher in November. After sharing the top spot in October, Evergreen once again led the pack with an overall on-time average of 85.3 percent, followed by Wan Hai with 84.1 percent. Other carriers to get scores of at least 80 percent in the month were K Line (81.8 percent), Maersk Line (80.9 percent), MOL (80.9 percent), OOCL (80.6 percent), Yang Ming (80.3 percent) and Cosco (80.0 percent). At the bottom of the rankings table was MSC, which scored 53.1 percent.

“Reliability seems to have found a new and improved standard with the on-time performance settling in the 70 percent to 80 percent range in each of the last seven months, about 10 to 15 points better than the previous long-term average. Drewry believes that this new normal will last but that is probably close to the ceiling of what shippers can expect from carriers in the short-to-medium term as most of their attention will go on restoring profitability,” said Simon Heaney, senior manager of supply chain research at Drewry.

“The weaker financial environment probably won’t have much, if any, impact as during the industry’s nadir in 2009 on-time reliability actually improved by around 7 points to average 60 percent so there is little reason to expect any worsening in performance this time,” added Heaney.

Source: Drewry