Global schedule reliability dropped to 44.6% in December 2020, according to the latest Global Liner Performance (GLP) report released by maritime consultancy Sea-Intelligence.
“This means that for the fifth consecutive month it has been the lowest across all months since Sea-Intelligence introduced the benchmark in 2011,” says CEO Alan Murphy.
“Compared to December 2019, reliability is -31.7 percentage points lower, and it is the fifth consecutive month that we have recorded a double-digit Y/Y decline. We also see a similar trend with the average delay for late vessel arrivals, which has seen consecutive M/M increases for the past four months, reaching 5.74 days in December.”
The report covers schedule reliability across 34 different trade lanes and 60+ carriers
Hamburg Süd was the most reliable carrier with 55.3% schedule reliability. “However, we can see in figure 3 how significant the deterioration is compared to December 2019.”
HMM and ZIM were the only lines to record a M/M improvement, whereas none of the carriers recorded a Y/Y improvement. “Maersk Line recorded the smallest decline of a still staggering -27.5 percentage points.
“This slump in reliability coincided with the carriers’ introduction of capacity on the major trade lanes, above and beyond what we have seen before. With continued widespread port congestion, and with carriers still not letting off capacity-wise (especially on the major trades), not even for Chinese New Year, shippers may not see an improvement until 2021-Q2.”
