Global schedule reliability continues to slowly creep upwards, recording a marginal month-to-month improvement for March 2022.
Reliability figures in March 2022 reached 35.9 per cent, the highest 2022 reliability levels so far, according to analysis firm Sea-Intelligence.
The average delay for late vessel arrivals decreased once again, this time by -0.32 days to 7.26 days in March 2022.
Despite the improvement, the average delay figure has now been over 7 days since August 2021 and continues to be the highest across each month when compared historically. March 2022 still scores slightly below the 2021 level.
Disruptive global events including COVID-19 lockdowns in China has led to fluctuations in container supply and demand, and caused bottlenecks in supply chains globally.
Consequently, ports and inland networks are facing severe capacity restrains with erratic levels of containers flowing in and out of its facilities, leading to greater numbers of blank sailings and late arrivals from container carriers.
With higher demand of containerised goods driven by the pandemic and restrictions on supply and vessel booking availability, carriers have reported earth-shattering levels of income. Last week Ocean Network Express reported revenues of over $30 billion in its 2021 financial year.
With schedule reliability of 50.3 per cent, Maersk was the only carrier with a score of over 50 per cent, followed by Hamburg Süd with 45.9 per cent.
There were seven carriers with schedule reliability of 30 per cent to 40 per cent and five with schedule reliability of 20 per cent to 30 per cent.
Wan Hai had the lowest schedule reliability in March 2022 of 22.6 per cent.
On a year-to-year basis, only three of the top-14 carriers recorded an improvement in schedule reliability in March 2022 – with the largest improvement of just 1.6 percentage points.
