Global shipping schedule reliability continued its upward trend in July increasing by 0.5 percentage points month/month to 40.5% according to maritime analyst, Sea-Intelligence.

In June schedule reliability increased by 3.6 percentage points to 40.0% — also an improvement from the 36.4% seen in May, which was up 2.1 percentage points from the performance seen in April.

Average delay for vessel arrivals dropping

"This is now the second time since the start of the pandemic that schedule reliability improved year-on-year," said Alan Murphy, CEO, Sea-Intelligence.

"The average delay for late vessel arrivals has been dropping sharply so far this year, tapering off a little in the past few months."

The Sea-Intelligence report noted that in July 2022, the average delay improved by -0.09 days month-on-month, which means that the delay figure is now firmly below the 7-day mark, and an improvement over the respective 2021 figure.

With schedule reliability of 48.0%, Sea-Intel said Maersk was the most reliable carrier in July, followed by Evergreen with 44.3% and CMA CGM, which also recorded schedule reliability of over 40%.

During the period, the maritime analyst noted that there were nine carriers with schedule reliability of 30%-40% and only two with schedule reliability of 20%-30%.

"In July 2022, once again, a lot of the carriers were very close to each other in terms of schedule reliability, with 10 carriers within 10 percentage points of each other," Murphy commented.

In July, ZIM had the lowest schedule reliability at 26.6%.

Meanwhile, Sea-Intelligence said on a year-on-year level, 11 of the top-14 carriers recorded an improvement in schedule reliability in July 2022, with 7 carriers recording double-digit improvements.