Global Liners More Reliable in Q2

Global liner schedule reliability in the second quarter of 2015 improved to 76.5% from 69.6% in the previous quarter, improving 1.8 percentage points on a year-on-year level, as reported by maritime analyst SeaIntel.

In 2015-Q2 all top-20 carriers recorded an increase in schedule reliability over 2015-Q1, except Hamburg Süd which performed at the same level. Schedule reliability in 2015-Q2 was based on 34,383 separate vessel arrivals, SeaIntel said.

Due to the merger of CSAV with Hapag Lloyd, the CSAV will not longer be evaluated as an independent carrier, therefore Wan Hai is now included as one of the top-20 carriers.

From a global perspective MOL, APL and Wan Hai were the most reliable carriers with on-time performances of 83.5%, 83.3% and 82.9%, respectively. The largest Y/Y increases in schedule reliability were seen from NYK, MOL and OOCL, which improved by 11.9, 10.3 and 8.9 percentage points, respectively.

The report shows that the largest Y/Y decreases were seen by Maersk Line and Hamburg Süd, which performed respectively 3.7 and 3.5 percentage points lower than the same period of last year.

Danish Maersk Line delivered a reliability score of 82% in the second quarter of the year, with a gap of 5.5% against the industry average of 76.5%.

“In light of tough competition, Maersk Line is pleased to be in the top quartile position – its set objective – yet remains committed to improve,” the company said.

Head of Operations Execution Keith Svendsen explains that the dynamics of the shipping industry impacts the overall industry performance as well as Maersk Line’s.

“The shipping industry is constantly changing with the number of alliances aimed at having lower costs expanding. With larger vessels in their fleets, carriers have an incentive to reach ports on time to ensure that loading/discharging of ever increasing numbers of containers can be done in the most time and cost efficient manner. The product of these factors is now starting to show,” he explains.

According to SeaIntel’s report, the Asia-USWC trade lane showed an improvement of 45.6 percentage points to 60.6% in Q2 over 14.9% in 2015-Q1, indicating a resolution to the labour dispute and congestion problems which were heavily impacting schedule reliability in 2014-Q3 to 2015-Q1.

ZIM was the most reliable carrier in Asia-USEC trade lane at 82.5%, followed by the G6 carriers at around 79%, and the largest Y/Y improvement was seen by MSC with an increase of 55.7 percentage points over 2014-Q2 to 63.4%.

In the Asia-North Europe trade lane schedule reliability in Q2 increased to the highest quarterly level ever recorded since 2011 at 93.8%, with a quarterly increase over 2015-Q1 of 30.2 percentage points and an Y/Y performance increase of 18.3 percentage points.

In the Asia-Mediterranean trade schedule reliability also increased to the highest level to 87.7% in Q2 2015, with Wan Hai, Maersk Line and MSC as the most reliable carriers with a performance of 100%, 96.3% and 92.5%, respectively.