Container service reliability fell marginally in the third quarter and is expected to slide further in the fourth quarter, according to Drewry Maritime Research’s quarterly report “Carrier Performance Insight.”
The percentage of on-time ship arrivals dropped to 73.5 percent, down from the record high of 75.7 percent set in the second quarter. Drewry expects the arrival timeliness of container ships and containers to decline again in the fourth quarter due to the impact of hurricane Sandy and the planned vessel winter programs and blank sailings.
Despite the small on-time percentage drop, the average deviation between the advertised day of arrival and the actual day of arrival for all vessel calls was unchanged quarter-on-quarter at the record low of 0.6 days.
Maersk Line held on to its status as the most reliable major carrier, with an all-trades on-time score of 90.5 percent in the third quarter, down from 91.4 percent in the previous quarter.
Safmarine, which shares space on many of its sister Maersk Line’s services, came in second with an on-time percentage of 90.3 percent.
Hanjin Shipping dropped down to third place with an on-time percentage of 88.1 percent, down by 1.5 percentage points compared with its second quarter result.
The three top lines were some way ahead of the rest of the carriers, with the disparity in performance showing a staggering 40 percentage point difference between the most and least reliable carriers.
“While the industry average is finally getting up to mildly respectable numbers, shippers should not lose sight of the fact those standards can vary dramatically between carriers when making their procurement decisions,” said Simon Heaney, research manager at Drewry.
The report also highlights how the carrier industry’s reliability issues seem to start before the box is loaded onto the ship as, according to data compiled by Drewry, about three out of 10 containers are not loaded on the intended ship.
The on-time shipment of cargo in the third quarter was 68 percent, down by 1 percentage point on the previous quarter. As this measures whether a box is loaded onto a ship as scheduled, any discrepancy at this point will likely mean the container will arrive late at the final destination port, even if the originally intended ship voyage is on time.
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