Drewry: Slower doesn’t mean on time

Drewry: Slower doesn’t mean on time    The growing practice of slow steaming container shipping services has coincided with an unexpected deterioration in the on-time arrivals of vessels, Drewry Shipping Consultants said Tuesday.
   According to Drewry’s latest Container Shipper Insight report, out of 1,600 ships tracked in the three months through Dec. 31, only 53 percent arrived either on the scheduled day of arrival or a day prior.
   After achieving on-time arrival scores of 60 percent or above in first three quarters of 2009 — including a best-ever 69 percent second quarter result, the fourth quarter performance dragged the historical average down to 55 percent.
   Drewry said each of the major east/west trade lanes suffered a drop in on-time performances in the fourth quarter, compared to the third quarter:
   ' Transatlantic services deteriorated the most, sliding from an average on-time performance of 70 percent in the third quarter to 55 percent in the fourth quarter.
   ' Transpacific services slipped from 64 percent to 54 percent.
   ' Asia/Europe/Med trade dropped from 52 percent to 50 percent.
   Drewry advises shippers in those core trades should add a day on to carriers' advertised port-to-port sailing schedules as the average deviation from the scheduled port arrival for all three trades was one day.

Heaney

   'These results are especially disappointing as we had expected reliability to improve as a consequence of more slow steaming, which should in theory help matters by creating a buffer in the schedule,' said Simon Heaney, editor of Freight Shipper Insight and Schedule Reliability Insight. 'It seems that carriers are not prepared to put their foot down if they fall behind schedule,' he said.
   Heaney noted the dialogue regarding slow steaming is starting to change and a few shippers are starting to wonder what is in it for them.
   'The benefits of slow steaming seem to be entirely skewed towards the carrier in terms of fuel cost savings and capacity restriction, while shippers are hit with the double-whammy of having to pay more through higher rates but getting a worse standard of service,' he said.
   Drewry, which has been monitoring container service reliability since the end of 2005, said that starting in April it will offer a new standalone report called Schedule Reliability Insight that will provide all the same comparative ocean schedule reliability measurements as before — by carrier, service and trade, enabling shippers to refine their carrier selection. ' Chris Dupin