Container shipping schedule reliability improves to 64.4%
With 71.3% schedule reliability in September, Maersk and Hamburg Süd were the most reliable top-14 carriers
Global schedule reliability increased by 1.2 percentage points M/M in September 2023 to 64.4 percent, according to the latest update from Sea-Intelligence.
"Barring the increase in May, schedule reliability has been ranging within two percentage points since March 2023."
On a Y/Y level, schedule reliability was 19 percentage points higher. The average delay for late vessel arrivals decreased by 0.09 days M/M to 4.58 days. With the M/M decrease, the average delay for late vessel arrivals is now -1.30 days better off than at the same point last year, the update added.
Sea-Intelligence covers schedule reliability across 34 different trade lanes and 60+ carriers.
Maersk, Hamburg Süd most reliable
With 71.3 percent schedule reliability in September, Maersk and Hamburg Süd were the most reliable top-14 carriers, followed by MSC with 69.8 percent. Six other carriers had schedule reliability of 60-70 percent.
As many as 10 of the top-14 carriers recorded a M/M increase in September with PIL recording the largest increase of 7.3 percentage points.
On a Y/Y level, 13 of the 14 carriers recorded double-digit improvements with Hamburg Süd recording the largest improvement of 26.8 percentage points.
Vessel utilisation declining further
Vessel utilisation has been quite poor in recent months, and carriers have announced a host of blank sailings in recent weeks. "Even then, there has been significant Y/Y growth in the capacity being offered in the market. If the intention of these blank sailings was to revert capacity growth, that hasn’t happened. As a result, we will continue to see very low utilisation in November 2023."
Sea-Intelligence shows the underlying capacity utilisation with the blue line showing the actual utilisation, and the orange line denoting "projection for the rest of 2023. The supply projection is based on carriers’ vessel deployment schedules until the end of 2023. For the demand projection, we took the June-August 2023 demand growth (compared to the pre-pandemic period of 2019) and assumed the same trend for the rest of 2023."
