Box vessels fell slightly behind in reliability in October, partly owing to network suspensions and void sailings, and the slower service is expected to continue through to early next year, according to a new report from Drewry.
Ship reliability took a small step backwards last month as the average on-time performance across all trades reached 77.9%, according to Carrier Performance Insight, the online schedule reliability tool provided by Drewry Supply Chain Advisors.
Tracking reliability across 10 deep-sea container trades, instead of just the three East-West trades that were previously measured up to September 2015, the October performance was down from the overall on-time result of 79.9% the preceding month.
Drewry said the expanded coverage is part of an upgrade to Carrier Performance Insight, which now covers 69 ports and 809 port pairs.
“Delays in transiting the Panama Canal may have hindered reliability of Transpacific all-water services between Asia and the US East Coast, while in Asia-Europe the suspension of a couple of services and blank voyages will not have aided smooth operations,” said Simon Heaney, senior manager of supply chain research at Drewry.
The on-time result for the East-West trades came in at 77.3% in October, while the first aggregate result for the seven North-South routes was slightly better at 79.1%.
In the East-West category, October saw worse performances in the trans-Pacific, which declined by 3.5 percentage points against September to 75.1%, while in the Asia-Europe trade, reliability dropped by 3 points to 78.2%. On the plus side, reliability on the trans-Atlantic rose by 12 points in October to a series-high of 84%.
The most punctual of the North-South trades in October was the Asia-South Asia route with an on-time performance of 87.8%, while the tardiest was the Asia-Africa route that saw only 68.4% of voyages arrive as scheduled.
Said Heaney, “We expected to see a decline in reliability as the container industry enters the slack fourth quarter, but it is encouraging to see that it was only marginal.”
He also said it was good news that reliability appeared to be of equal standards in both the East-West and North-South routes. “We expect the slowing reliability trend to continue through to the early months of next year, but it will remain above historical performances.”
Two carriers shared the top of the carrier reliability rankings in October with K Line and Evergreen of the CKYH Alliance both scoring on-time performances of 85.7%. At the bottom of the pile was MSC which recorded an average of 52.4% in the month.
“The trend towards more carriers improving their reliability was once again evident as 16 of the 19 carriers tracked scored at least 75% in October,” said Drewry.
