Annual global shipping schedule reliability improved by 19.5 percentage points (PP) to 62.1% in 2023 from 42.6%, according to a new Sea-Intelligence report.
Despite the sharp improvement, however, it only reached the level of 2020 and is still below the 70%-80% of 2012-2019.
"What is concerning, however, is that schedule reliability has declined month-on-month (M/M) the entire Q4, and we are likely to see a similar impact for January 2024 due to the Red Sea Crisis," the report said.
"This should be temporary, though; once the additional transit time is accounted for in the carriers' schedules, we will potentially see an improvement in schedule reliability," it added.
Lastly, Sea-Intelligence noted that the crisis came too late to have any significant impact on average delay, which improved from 6.38 to 4.83 days in 2023-FY.
Maersk: most-reliable in 2023
In terms of the global carriers, Maersk noted that the most reliable in 2023-FY with schedule reliability of 67.7%, followed by MSC (65.9%), CMA CGM (62.8%), Evergreen (61.9%), and Wan Hai (61.3%) as the only carriers above 60%.
The remaining carriers had between 50% and 60% schedule reliability in 2023-FY, with Yang Ming at the bottom with 50.7%.
Meanwhile, Sea Intelligence said all 13 global carriers recorded a double-digit year-on-year (Y/Y) improvement, with Wan Hai recording the largest improvement of 27.4 percentage points.
Of the alliances, 2M was the most reliable at 57.8%, followed by Ocean Alliance (55.3%) and THE Alliance (43.1%).
"While all of them recorded double-digit Y/Y improvements, only 2M scored better than the industry average on the six major East/West trades," said
Alan Murphy, CEO, Sea-Intelligence.
"Those six trade lanes also recorded Y/Y improvements in schedule reliability in 2023-FY; however, only the Asia-Mediterranean trade lane outscored the industry average on a trade lane level," Murphy said.