Ship schedule reliability dips, but on-time box delivery improves 2pc

SHIP schedule reliability throughout the world fell from 84 per cent in October to 82 per cent in November from October, though container delivery improved two per cent at the same time, according to maritime analyst SeaIntel.

A survey of one million daily container status messages from SeaIntel's partner INTTRA, showed that 68 per cent of all containers were delivered on time in November, reported American Shipper.

Asia-Europe vessels had an average on-time arrival performance of 88 per cent, with 87 per cent of containers delivered on time.

"These high performance figures represent a systematic improvement seen during the course of 2012, and certainly provides a welcome improvement for shippers relying on timely services," SeaIntel said.

"Shippers should, however, still be aware that differences on schedule reliability do abound even on a high-performing trade such as Asia-Europe. In November, performance varied from 76 per cent to 99 per cent across the 20 carriers on the Asia-North Europe trade," the report said.

Mediterranean Shipping Co (MSC) continued to improve throughout 2012, from being the lowest performer at the start of the year to the fourth best in November at 90 per cent.

Maersk retained its No 1 spot at 99 per cent schedule reliability on the Asia-North Europe trade.

The schedule reliability data is based on SeaIntel's database of 10,000 monthly arrivals across 250 ports and more than 50 carriers.