Containership reliability was broadly unchanged in November as the average on-time performance across all trades slipped by 0.8 percentage points against October to 77.2%, according to Drewry’s Carrier Performance Insight.
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% 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%, followed by Wan Hai with 84.1%. Other carriers to get scores of at least 80% in the month were K Line (81.8%), Maersk Line (80.9%), MOL (80.9%), OOCL (80.6%), Yang Ming (80.3%) and Cosco (80.0%). At the bottom of the rankings table was MSC, which scored 53.1%.
“Reliability seems to have found a new and improved standard with the on-time performance settling in the 70-80% range in each of the last seven months, about 10-15 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% so there is little reason to expect any worsening in performance this time,” added Heaney.