Container line schedule reliability continued to dropped in August, according to Sea-Intelligence, with last month's results dropping to an all-time low.

The maritime analyst said in its latest Global Liner Performance (GLP) report that schedule reliability has hovered between 35%-40% for most of the year, in August 2021 it dropped to 33.6%, a new all-time low during the 10 years Sea-Intelligence has tracked global schedule reliability.

On a year-on-year basis, reliability was -30.1 percentage points lower than the level seen in August 2020, continuing the trend of year-on-year declines of over -30.0 percentage points in each month in 2021 so far.

"The average delay for LATE vessel arrivals continued to deteriorate, increasing by 0.58 days month-on-month to 7.57 days in August,"  Sea-Intelligence added.

Maersk most reliable liner in August

Maersk Line was once again the most reliable top-14 carrier in August according to the report, with schedule reliability of 45.6%, followed by Hamburg Süd with 38.0%.

Another three carriers had schedule reliability between 30%-40%, with only three carriers recording schedule reliability of 20%-30%.

Meanwhile, six carriers had schedule reliability of under 20%, with Evergreen recording the lowest schedule reliability of just 11.5% for the month.

Sea-Intelligence said only HMM recorded a month-on-month improvement in schedule reliability, of 1.6 percentage points, while no carrier recorded a year-on-year improvement, with the smallest decline of -24.2 percentage points recorded by Maersk Line.