Global schedule reliability improves in Feb.

Global schedule reliability improved by nearly 5 percentage points from January to February, according to SeaIntel’s latest industry-leading Global Liner Performance report. On-time performance increased to 72.2 per cent during the month (based on 9,931 vessel arrivals). Data from INTTRA shows that container delivery increased to 54.2 per cent in February, from 49.1 per cent in January, based on 2.8 million container arrivals.

In February, Hamburg Süd was the most reliable carrier with an on-time performance of 86.2 per cent. It was followed by CSAV and Maersk Line with a recorded on-time performance of 84.4 per cent and 83.4 per cent, respectively.

"The improvement in global schedule reliability was clearly reflected among the Top 20 carriers, as 19 carriers recorded an increase in performance from January to February… For the first time since February 2014, we see that Hamburg Süd is back on the top spot…," said Mr Morten Berg Thomsen, shipping analyst at SeaIntel.

Reliability in the Transpacific EB trade lane (999 vessel arrivals) decreased for the seventh consecutive month to 39.8 per cent, while container delivery decreased to 20 per cent. Both scores represent a new record-low performance in the trade lane. In the Asia-North Europe trade lane (730 vessel arrivals), on-time performance increased to 73.2 per cent, which marks a Y/Y improvement of 23.2 percentage points, while the Asia-Mediterranean trade’s (735 vessel arrivals) schedule reliability dropped to 63.4 per cent.

Mr Berg Thomsen added: "The most important incident taking place in February was the agreement reached between the Pacific Maritime Association and the International Longshore and Warehouse Union; so the situation at the US West Coast can return to normal, although it will take some months. In February, we saw that the Transpacific EB trade lane declined to a level that is lower than even some of the trade lanes to Africa that notoriously are known for having a very low performance due to low productivity in the ports and very poor hinterland infrastructure. This just underlines how important this agreement was to the industry and the US."

Source : Exim News Service - Copenhagen, April 5