Containership reliability ends 2014 on a downer

Air cargo chiefs will note with interest that containerised ocean freight reliability declined for the second month in a row in December 2014, according to Drewry’s enhanced Carrier Performance Insight.
The latest data for boxship journeys shows that the aggregate on-time performance for the Asia-Europe, Transpacific and Transatlantic box trades dropped to 58% in December, down from 62% in November and 64% in October.
December’s on-time performance was the worst since August (55%) with the monthly decline the result of weaker reliability across all three trades.
Reliability in the Asia-Europe trade (7,475 voyages tracked) declined by 4.5 points month-on-month to 64.3%. In the Transpacific (3,826 voyages), the on-time performance dropped 3.3 points to a new low of 47.4%, while Transatlantic (570 voyages) reliability also slumped to a nadir of 46.3%, down by 12.6 points.
 “The slower-demand winter season should ease some of the congestion pressures and allow for some improvement in container shipping reliability,” said Simon Heaney, senior manager of supply chain research at Drewry.
“Falling bunker prices should also help raise the on-time performance as carriers will face a lower fuel bill for speeding up ships that fall behind schedule. However, the introduction of new alliance service networks from the start of 2015 is a short-term risk to reliability as new schedules are phased in,” added Heaney. 
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