On-time performance has been shown to be much better on the Asia-Europe trade in the past 12 months in comparison to the trans-Pacific routes, the Journal of Commerce reported OOCL-owned company CargoSmart as saying.
This data reflects on-time performance of the three main east-west trades from November 1, 2014 to October 17, 2015, while measuring 140,000 schedules among 20 carriers.
Andy Lane of CTI Consultancy said: “I am not sure why Asia-Europe would be delivering significantly better schedule-reliability than Trans-Pacific, especially now that the USWC ports have returned to ‘normal’ (stable but still poor service levels).
“For schedule-reliability generally, all trades and lower fuel-prices make occasional speeding-up to recover time a little less prohibitive than it was when a tonne of fuel cost in excess of US$500.
“With the stagnant and even contracting volumes in some trades, vessels are likely to be less utilised (fewer moves and therefore less time in port and more at sea). Same time terminal through-put has not surged, and therefore the terminals are able to handle present volumes more effectively than previously.”
One contributing factor for the performance of the US West Coast is the port congestion in January 2015 which caused on-time performance to dip by 20%.
Also, on-time performance at the three core East-West trades jumped by 4% to reach a new data-series high of 71.6%.
