Maersk was hailed as the most reliable top-13 global carrier by Sea-Intelligence for the January to September period this year.

The Danish liner consultancy firm developed a composite score to assess the ocean carrier's reliability from January to September 2024. 

"For each global carrier, we calculated the percentage of times they ranked 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc., on a trade lane. Every time they ranked 1st, they were assigned a score of 1.0; every time they ranked 2nd, they were assigned a score of 0.9; and so on, until a score of 0.1, which was assigned every time they ranked 10th on a trade lane," Sea-Intelligence explained.

 [Source: Sea-Intelligence]

The Danish liner consultancy firm said that based on these metrics, Maersk was at the top of the composite rankings, ranking first on a trade lane 16% of the time and within the top 3 44% of the time.

ZIM followed, having been ranked 1st 17% of the time and within the top 3 39% of the time.

CMA CGM, MSC, and PIL rounded out the top 5, while Ocean Network Express (ONE) was at the bottom with the lowest composite score.

"ONE was ranked 1st on a trade lane in only 2% of the time and was within the top 3 30% of the time," commented Alan Murphy, CEO of Sea-Intelligence.

The report went on to note that the top carriers were chosen based on consistently being in the top 5 of most reliable global carriers in 50%-80% of the trade lanes.

"Essentially, if they weren't 1st, they were 2nd or 3rd, and more often than not, no lower than the 5th most reliable on a given trade lane," it said.