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Evergreen sets the bar very low with schedule reliability of just 13.2%

Setting an incredible record low for schedule reliability, Taiwan’s Evergreen managed to get just 13.2% of its ships into port on time in Q3.

New schedule reliability data from Copenhagen-based Sea-Intelligence shows global carriers recorded their worst ever performance in the July to September period, with Evergreen, the seventh largest liner, as the worst performer with what the Danish analysts described as an “insanely low” level of reliability.

For the third quarter, global liner schedule reliability dropped to the lowest point of 34.3% since Sea-Intelligence started tracking these numbers.

Maersk was not only the most reliable carrier in Q3 with schedule reliability of 45.6% but was also the only carrier to have recorded schedule reliability of over 40%.

The average delay for late vessel arrivals reached 7.32 days in Q3, also a record figure, adding extra strain to supply chain planners.

“There is a risk that this situation might get exacerbated as we head into the new year,” Sea-Intelligence warned in its latest weekly report. “Carriers have ramped up capacity in 2021-Q4, with planned capacity levels on some major trades even higher than in Q3.”

With regulators looking at liner performance, carrier CEOs have been at pains to point out where they believe the problems for this year’s box snarl-ups lie.

In a trading update on Friday, Jeremy Nixon, CEO of Japan’s Ocean Network Express (ONE), stressed that inland bottlenecks were the cause for shipping delays.

“Hundreds of ships waiting around the world at anchor is the effect – and not the cause – of such inland logistics bottlenecks backing up into the port infrastructure,” Nixon said.

Sam Chambers

Starting out with the Informa Group in 2000 in Hong Kong, Sam Chambers became editor of Maritime Asia magazine as well as East Asia Editor for the world’s oldest newspaper, Lloyd’s List. In 2005 he pursued a freelance career and wrote for a variety of titles including taking on the role of Asia Editor at Seatrade magazine and China correspondent for Supply Chain Asia. His work has also appeared in The Economist, The New York Times, The Sunday Times and The International Herald Tribune.

Comments

  1. Someone is playing the blame game by pointing the finger at inland logistics operations. This is all a multi-faceted problem which has caught all the players flat footed and exposed some deep fault lines in the present methods and systems of freight and logistics. There has been little evidence of resilience or contingency planning. More of the same will not help.

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