Carriers More Reliable in April

Container service reliability reached a data-series high in April with the aggregate on-time performance for the three key East-West trades rising to 67.6%, up by 4.1 percentage points on March, according to Drewry’s Carrier Performance Insight.

The previous best since Drewry’s new data series started in May 2014 was achieved in October last year (64.3%) after which the industry struggled to cope with heavy port congestion on the US West Coast and the implementation of new alliance partnerships and services.

Indicative of the return to ‘normal’ operations on the USWC the Transpacific trade saw the biggest improvement in April with on-time reliability rising by 15.1 points to 54%. However, Transpacific reliability remains about 20 points down on the series peaks of June and July 2014. Reliability on the Asia-Europe trade improved for the third consecutive month in April, while the Transatlantic bucked a six month declining trend with a higher performance.

The most reliable carrier in April was Maersk Line with an average on-time performance of 85%, followed by OOCL (77%); MOL and NYK (both 74%). At the bottom of the rankings were Wan Hai (51%) and PIL (40%).

“Drewry expected the upturn in reliability following the end of the exceptional circumstances,” said Simon Heaney, Senior Manager of Supply Chain Research at Drewry. “We expect further improvements in the next few months, but as on-time performances are approaching the historical ceilings, they might only be marginal.”