Asia-Europe Schedule Reliability Defies European Port Congestion

By Gavin van Marle (The Loadstar) –

Despite ongoing reports and warnings of worsening port congestion levels in North European ports, container shipping lines’ schedule reliability to the region saw a marked improvement in May.

According to new data from Sea-Intelligence Consulting, 66.8% of all vessels on the Asia-North Europe trade arrived on time during the month, a 12.4% improvement over April and up 18% year-on-year.

Gemini was the most reliable carrier alliance with schedule reliability of 85.4%, followed by Ocean Alliance at 68.8%, MSC at 68.7%, and the Premier Alliance following far behind at 35%, although it was up on the 21.1% it had shown in the previous month.

Meanwhile, there has also been a steady decline in the number of port omissions during the last few months at the top five North European hubs of Antwerp, Rotterdam, Bremerhaven, Hamburg and Le Havre – in February and March, port omissions reached 13% of the total arrivals, a level which was almost on a par with the pandemic peak.

However, according to Sea-Intelligence, omissions dropped to 9% in April and to 7% in May.

“A drop in port omissions even with widespread reports of port congestion in May could mean one of two things: Carriers have decided that nothing can be done about port congestion, and they have no option but to call these ports contingencies and plan out; or carriers remove the port from their rotation altogether, until the situation improves,” the analyst said.

According to Kuehne + Nagel, terminal yard utilisation remains high across the region – several Antwerp terminals are reported to be above 90% utilised, while Rotterdam, Bremerhaven and Hamburg are at 80%-85% utilisation.

According to most port industry analysts, anything above a 75% utilisation level is when congestion begins to occur.

And with a full rail shutdown across Hamburg’s terminals scheduled for 4-8 July, utilisation levels across German ports are expected to significantly worsen over the coming weeks.

On the Asia-Mediterranean trade, Gemini was also the most reliable carrier alliance with schedule reliability of 79.3%, followed by MSC at 73.4%, Premier Alliance at 48%, with the Ocean Alliance lagging at 30%.

Across the deepsea global networks operated by the alliances, the Gemini Cooperation hit an on time arrival rate of 88.4%, a 1.2% improvement over the previous month, while MSC’s standalone network was the second most reliable, with an on-time arrival rate of 77.9%, with the Ocean and Premier alliances far behind, at 57.4% and 52.7% respectively.

On the increasingly unpredictable transpacific eastbound trade to the US west coast, beset by shipper worries over tariffs, there was a huge disparity in reliability performance between the different groupings, possibly reflecting the different manners in which they dealt with the recent wild swings in volumes – the Gemini Cooperation reached 98.5% on-time reliability, although this was down from 100% in the two previous months.

In contrast, MSC managed just 50% schedule reliability, and Ocean and Premier alliances were 65.2% and 64.2% respectively.

Meanwhile, US carrier Matson continued to be the most reliable transpacific carrier with a 100% score.

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