No improvement in Africa container delivery reliability in three years

Research by SeaIntel for PortOverview Africa found that port congestion continues to hamper liner schedule reliability and final delivery in and out of African ports.    New research shows that there has been virtually no improvement in liner schedule reliability in African ports over the past three years.
   The research, compiled by SeaIntel Maritime Analysis for PortOverview Africa and presented this week at the Containerisation International Global Liner Shipping Conference in Hamburg, found that the “reliability of container shipment deliveries into and out of Africa remains approximately the same for shippers as they did three years ago, with schedule reliability and timely container delivery varying widely due to the sheer number of incidents in and around West African ports.”
   Through April 19 this year, portoverview.com registered 735 incidents in African ports, of which 36 percent were congestion-related. SeaIntel conducted an in-depth study based on over 2,000 vessel arrivals and departures to and from Africa each month for the last three years, as well as analyzing thousands of monthly actual container deliveries to final inland destinations to and from Africa.
   The analysis includes examination of Automaton Identification System data of average dwell time in African ports for more than 520 vessels, ranging in size from 350 TEUs to 9,400 TEUs, over the three-year period.
   “Overall, the chance a shipper has of a container arriving reliably at its African import destination is no better than it was three years ago,” said SeaIntel Analyst Morten Berg Thomsen. “This is particularly true in the case of West Africa, where we have seen no real material improvement in vessel arrivals, average vessel dwell time or genuine advances in road and rail hinterland connections at the main large West African ports, perhaps with the exception of Luanda in the southern range and Dakar in the northern range.”