Drewry: Schedule reliability improving for ocean carriers

Container carriers are getting better at keeping to their posted schedules, according to the London-based consulting firm, as reliability hit a peak of 79.9 percent in September, but Drewry still expects results to fall over the next few months.    Container carriers are getting better at keeping to schedule says London-based Drewry Supply Chain Advisors.
   Service reliability across the three main East-West trades between Asia and North America, Asia and Europe, and North America and Europe reached a new high in September, according to statistics Drewry has been keeping since March 2014.
   On time performance for the three trades rose to 79.9 percent in September, up 6.5 percentage points from August, according to Drewry’s Carrier Performance Insight report.
   Drewry measures a ship as “on-time” if its berths at ports of discharge equal the scheduled estimated times of arrival, as captured at the ports of loading.
   “The steady improvement in reliability seen through 2015 is very welcome news for shippers, who at the same time are the beneficiaries of very low freight rates,” Simon Heaney, senior manager of supply chain research at Drewry, said of the results. “Operational changes to services for the traditionally slower-volume fourth quarter has the potential to disrupt the improving reliability trend, but we expect results over the next few months to only be marginally down on September’s peak.”
   “As for why it is improving, my unscientific take is that it is because of a range of factors, including the demands of alliances to standardize performance among members, relatively more stable service networks, a greater appreciation from carriers on the impact of reliability on customer relations and retention, and lower fuel bills making the decision to catch-up if required less costly,” Heaney told American Shipper. “Generally, with fuel having come down so dramatically to some extent I think carriers know they have to deliver on their schedules now as they will not be giving away faster transit times due to the latent capacity it would release.”
   “The on-time average of Transpacific services rose by 11.7 points to 78.6 percent, the best performance recorded for the trade since the start of the data series in May 2014. Compared to September 2014, reliability for the Transpacific is up by 13.2 points. In the Asia-Europe trade, reliability improved by 4.3 points against the previous month to a second-best monthly performance of 81.2 percent. Year-on-year Asia-Europe reliability is up by a huge margin of 21.3 points,” said Drewry.
   “The only negative for the month was the performance of services in the Transatlantic route, which slipped by 2.3 points month-on-month to 72.0 percent in September. The annual comparison for the trade is also unfavourable, down by 6.9 points,” the consulting firm added.