Container service reliability improving

Recent statistics from Drewry and CargoSmart show on-time performance at 67.6 percent on the three major east-west trade lanes.    Container service reliability reached its highest level in more than a year in April on major trade routes, according to recent statistics from maritime consultant Drewry.
   Drewry said aggregate on-time performance for the three key east-west trades — the transpacific, transatlantic, and Asia-Europe — rose to 67.6 percent last month, up from 63.5 percent in March.
   That was the best performance since Drewry began using data from CargoSmart to track on-time ship performance in March 2014 for its Carrier Performance Insight publication. The prior peak in October 2014 was 64.3%.
   Since then, the industry has struggled to cope with heavy port congestion on the U.S. 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 percent,” said Drewry. “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.”
   Drewry said its data found the most reliable carrier in April was Maersk Line with an average on-time performance of 85 percent, followed by OOCL (77 percent); MOL and NYK (both 74 percent). At the bottom of the rankings were Wan Hai (51 percent) and PIL (40 percent).