Global schedule reliability for the world's container carriers fell to a record low in January, with regular top performer Maersk Line slipping to second on the SeaIntel monthly Global Liner Performance report.
Maersk Line dropped 2.6 percent in schedule reliability that saw Hamburg Süd moving into the most reliable carrier position for the first time since June last year, with a performance of 80.4 percent.
Evergreen was third in the January figures. Maersk and Evergreen achieved a performance of 79.7 percent and 75.7 percent, respectively. Both Hamburg Süd and Maersk still saw a decline in performance, while Evergreen improved its performance since December, but there continues to be a solid gap between the top two carriers and the rest.
A 3.5 percent decline in schedule reliability and container delivery from December to January saw overall global performance drop to the record low 70 percent mark.
"The continued drop in performance is concerning for both shippers and carriers, but the poor performance in January does not come as a big surprise, as the winter slack season often shows poor performance due to both weather incidents and the carrier using the slack season to restructure their services, with disruptions as a result," said Alan Murphy, SeaIntel COO and partner.
"January proved troublesome for many ports on the US East Coast which had to be closed due to winter storms, leading to congestions and service delays, with strong impact on carriers' schedule reliability in January. Finally, the strike by port workers in Chile and delays in some Chinese ports has also impacted the result negatively."
In January 2014, the global performance was based on 10,581 vessel arrivals in more than 270 ports around the world, covering 60 different carriers across 272 services and 32 different trade lanes, making the SeaIntel Global Liner Performance report the most comprehensive study of schedule reliability in the industry.
Data from INTTRA shows that the timeliness of global container delivery decreased as well, to a record-low global average of 53.6 percent in January 2014, from 58.8 percent in December 2013. The global container delivery performance is based on the arrival of more than 5.5 million containers in December and January.
Despite the report showing that January had the lowest performance in schedule reliability over the past two years, the South America to Mediterranean trade lane improved its performance by seven percentage points from December 2013 to January 2014.
However, all the main east-west trade lanes, transpacific eastbound, Asia to North Europe and Asia to the Mediterranean, saw their performance decline significantly by 12 percent, 13 percent and 12 percent, respectively.
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