Average on-time performance across all trades reached 77.9% in October, 2015, leading to a reduction in containership reliability, according to the latest Carrier Performance Insight report published by Drewry Supply Chain Advisors.
The latest result is based on reliability across 10 deep-sea container trades, instead of the three East-West trades as was previously measured up to and including September 2015, when the aggregate on-time result was 79.9%.
October, 2015 saw a 77.3% on-time result for the East-West trades, with Drewry’s first aggregate result for the seven North-South routes being marginally better at 79.1%.
In the East-West category, October saw worse performance levels in the Transpacific, which declined from 78.6% seen in September, 2015 to 75.1%.
Asia-Europe trade reliability dropped by 3% to 78.2%, yet on the plus side, reliability on the Transatlantic trade rose by 12 points in October to a series-high of 84.0%.
Simon Heaney, Senior Manager of Supply Chain Research at Drewry, said: “Delays in transiting the Panama Canal may have hindered reliability of Transpacific all-water services between Asia and the US East Coast, while in Asia-Europe the suspension of a couple of services and blank voyages will not have aided smooth operations.
“We expected to see a decline in reliability as the container industry enters the slack fourth quarter, but it is encouraging to see that it was only marginal.
“It is also welcome news that reliability appears to be of equal standards in both the East-West and North-South routes.
“We expect the slowing reliability trend to continue through to the early months of next year, but it will remain above historical performances.”
K Line and Evergreen of the CKYH Alliance both saw on-time performances of 85.7% in October, which were top scores in that month’s rankings.
In total, a total of 16 out of the 19 carriers tracked scored at least 75% in October, which shows that more carriers are improving their performance.