West Coast congestion, new alliances hurt liner reliability

Drewry’s monthly look at carrier on-time performance finds gridlock at West Coast ports and teething problems from newly arranged alliances in January.    Liner service reliability fell to a record low in January as the effects of U.S. West Coast congestion and the phasing-in of new alliance services took their toll, according to the Carrier Performance Insight, published monthly by global shipping consultancy Drewry.
   Overall on-time performance for the three key east-west trades slumped to 48.6 percent in January, down 9.4 percent from December, which itself was one of the worst months of 2014. Drewry called the performance levels “disappointing.”
   On a trade lane basis, the transpacific (based on 3,351 sailings) performed worst in terms of on-time percentage, with just 36 percent of calls arriving on schedule in January, down from 47 percent in December.
   The smaller transatlantic trade (with 437 sailings) fared little better at 45 percent, down by 1.4 percent from December, while the Asia-Europe trade (with 7,697 sailings) fell 10 percent, to 54 percent, its worst performance since August.
   “Drewry had anticipated some service deterioration in light of the new alliance formations which took effect in January and posed some risk from vessel repositioning,” said Simon Heaney, the firm’s senior manager of supply chain research, in a statement. “Additionally, ongoing congestion at U.S. West Coast ports was also expected to adversely impact overall performance levels. But the extent of the decline is particularly disappointing.”
   Maersk Line, the most reliable carrier in January, recorded an average on-time performance of 76 percent, virtually unchanged from December. COSCO Container Lines was second at 61 percent, while the worst performer was PIL at 21 percent.
   “The sizable margin between the most and least reliable shipping lines reemphasizes that not all carriers are the same,” Heaney said. “It also demonstrates how vital it is for retailers and manufacturers to fully understand the relative performance of different carriers and associated liner services in order to support procurement decisions.
   “Shippers are getting much lower value for [their] money at the moment as reliability is falling from an already low point, while all-in freight rates are rising. We expect reliability to improve in the coming months as new alliance services settle down and each carrier group seeks to make their new services more attractive to customers.,” he said.
   Drewry’s Carrier Performance Insight allows the reliability performance of container carriers to be compared on a port-to-port, trade lane, service and industry-wide basis using data from the e-commerce platform CargoSmart.
   American Shipper reported on schedule reliability in its February issue and hosted a webinar on the topic in December.