Container service reliability across the three main East-West trades reached a high in September, rising by 6.5 percentage points over August to the new record of 79.9%, according to Drewry Supply Chain Advisers’ latest ‘Carrier Performance Insight’ report.
The improvement seen in September was the largest month-on-month rise since March 2015, driven by greater reliability in the Transpacific and Asia-Europe trades that offset a lower on-time result in the Transatlantic route which slipped by 2.3 points to 72% in September.
After a two-month break Maersk Line returned to the top of the carrier reliability rankings in September with an on-time average across the three trades of 86.9%. The Danish mega-carrier has claimed top spot in 15 out of the last 17 months. A further sign of the overall improvement in reliability spreading across the industry is that eight of the 19 carriers tracked achieved a reliability rating of over 80%.
“The steady improvement in reliability seen through 2015 is very welcome news for shippers, who at the same time are the beneficiaries of very low freight rates. Operational changes to services for the traditionally slower-volume fourth quarter has the potential to disrupt the improving reliability trend, but we expect results over the next few months to only be marginally down on September’s peak,” said Simon Heaney, senior manager of supply chain research at Drewry.
