The on-time average of 76.0 percent for the 10 trades covered was a 4.1 point improvement on April, representing the third straight month-on-month rise. Along with the better on-time performance there was an improvement for the average deviation from the expected arrival at port, which came down from 0.9 days in April to 0.8 days in May, the lowest it has been since December 2015.

Eight of the 10 routes covered recorded month-on-month increases in May, the exceptions being Asia-Africa, down by 11.9 points to 77.2 percent, and Asia-South America that dropped by 1.5 points to 75.7 percent. The biggest improvement was seen in the trans-Pacific, which rose by 9.8 points to 76.3 percent, the best since September of last year.

The most reliable carrier in May was OOCL, which had an on-time average of 81.1 percent, very closely followed by Wan Hai (81.01 percent) and Evergreen (80.3 percent). A further sign of the universal attempt by carriers to improve reliability was the fact that the spread between the most and least reliable carrier was below 11 points as all lines scored above 70 percent.

“Service reliability is on a steadily improving path and is close to the heights reached in the second half of 2015. We expect the trend to continue through the next few months as carriers put reliability close to the top of their marketing,” said Simon Heaney, senior manager of supply chain research at Drewry.

Source: Drewry