Container line reliability keeps improving, but at slower rate

Date Added: 22 June 2023

Container line reliability keeps improving, but at slower rate

With a comprehensive network of international container shipping services, including LCL and FCL import and export operations, Davies Turner notes that ocean carrier reliability improved 1.7% in April to 64.2%, up 29.9% YoY, according to Sea-Intelligence’s Global Liner Performance report.

While reliability has improved from historic lows, the strength of the improvement has weakened with each subsequent month, according to the performance report. The average delay for late vessel arrivals was at about 4.34 days compared to 6.41 days in April 2022.

Reduced congestion at ports has provided carriers an opportunity to strengthen their schedule reliability. While ocean carrier reliability has recovered from historic lows, there is still room for improvement.

Collectively, carriers are improving but at an individual carrier level the performance is still at times quite a bit lower than seen pre-pandemic in 2019.

The report covers over 60 ocean carriers and 34 trade lanes. Maersk came out as the most reliable carrier with 70.3% of schedule reliability and MSC at 68%.

At the same time, ocean carriers have leaned on slow steaming to absorb additional ships without increasing capacity and it will be interesting to see whether the move to even slower-steaming will improve reliability. Theoretically you can argue that might happen, but past history suggests otherwise.

For more information about Davies Turner’s ocean freight forwarding and logistics services, please contact ocean@daviesturner.co.uk or visit the relevant pages of this website.