Since 2019, the most reliable carriers in the industry have rarely topped more than 30 per cent of the trade lanes they serve each month, found Sea-Intelligence.
The firm’s report sheds light on the performance of global shipping carriers across 34 trade lanes.
Sea-Intelligence raised the question of how can these carriers be the most reliable overall when they are not consistently the top performer across the majority of their routes.
“The answer lies in consistency,” said Alan Murphy, CEO of Sea-intelligence.
“These carriers were consistently in top-five of most reliable global carriers in 50-80 per cent of the trade lanes. Essentially, if they weren’t first, they were second or third, and more often than not, no lower than the fifth most reliable on a given trade lane.”
READ: Global schedule reliability reaches highest 2024 figure
To measure this consistency more precisely, Sea-Intelligence developed a composite score for global carriers from January to September 2024.
The methodology involved assigning scores based on a carrier’s rank in each trade lane. A carrier ranked first on a lane received a score of 1.0, second place earned 0.9, and so on, with 10th place scoring 0.1. These scores were then aggregated to give an overall ranking.
According to the results, Maersk emerged at the top of the composite rankings, securing the first position in 16 per cent of trade lanes and ranking within the top three on 44 per cent of routes.
ZIM followed closely, ranking first in 17 per cent of lanes and within the top three 39 per cent of the time.
CMA CGM, MSC, and PIL rounded out the top five. In contrast, ONE performed the worst in terms of reliability, ranking first only 2 per cent of the time and within the top three on just 30 per cent of lanes.
