Shipping schedule reliability remained on a downtrend in January as challenges in the ocean continued to weigh on the sector's performance.
Sea-Intelligence said in a new report that amidst the Red Sea crisis, global schedule reliability continued to decrease and dropped by -5.1 percentage points month-on-month (M/M) in January 2024 — which is the same M/M drop as in December 2023 to 51.6%.
"This drop means that the January 2024 score was the lowest since September 2022," the Danish maritime data analysis firm said.
It added that on a year-on-year (Y/Y) level, schedule reliability in January 2024 was -0.8 percentage points lower than in January 2023.
Sea-Intelligence noted that due to the round-of-Africa sailings, the average delay for late vessel arrivals deteriorated further, increasing by 0.59 days M/M to 6.01 days.
CMA CGM most reliable in January
The report found CMA CGM as the most reliable top-13 carrier in January 2024, with schedule reliability of 54.7%, followed by four more carriers that were above the 50% mark.
The remaining carriers all had a schedule reliability of 40%-50%, with Yang Ming the least reliable carrier for the month with a schedule reliability of 42.2%.
"In January 2024, the difference in schedule reliability between the most and least reliable carriers was the lowest since February 2023," commented Alan Murphy, CEO of Sea-Intelligence.
"Because of the current Red Sea crisis, and due to significant delays on the round-of-Africa sailings, none of the top-13 carriers were able to record a M/M improvement in schedule reliability, with only 7 carriers recording a Y/Y improvement in January 2024," he added.
Sea-Intelligence's Global Liner Performance (GLP) report covers schedule reliability across 34 different trade lanes and 60+ carriers.
