The growing practice of slow-steaming of container shipping services has coincided with an unexpected deterioration in the on-time arrivals of vessels, according to Drewry Shipping Consultants' latest Container Shipper Insight report.
Out of nearly 1,600 ships tracked in the three months between October 1 and December 31, 2009, only 53 percent arrived either on the scheduled day of arrival or a day prior, Drewry's report found.
After achieving on-time arrival scores of 60 percent or above in the first three quarters of 2009 – including a best ever 69 percent result in the second quarter – the fourth quarter performance dragged the historical average down to a low 55 percent.
Each of the major east-west trade-lanes suffered a drop in on-time performances in the fourth quarter with transatlantic services deteriorating the most, sliding from an average on-time performance of 70 percent in the third quarter to 55 percent in the final three months of the year.
Over the same period, transpacific services slipped from 64 percent to 54 percent, while services in the Asia/Europe/Med trade dropped from 52 percent to 50 percent.
Drewry advises shippers in those core trades to add a day on to carriers' advertised port-to-port sailing schedules as the average deviation from the scheduled port arrival for all three trades was 1.0 day.
"These results are especially disappointing as we had expected reliability to improve as a consequence of more slow-steaming, which should in theory help matters by creating a buffer in the schedule," said Simon Heaney, editor of Freight Shipper Insight and Schedule Reliability Insight.
"It seems that carriers are not prepared to put their foot down if they fall behind schedule," he said.
Mr Heaney noted that the dialogue regarding slow-steaming is starting to change and a few shippers are starting to wonder what is in it for them.
"The benefits of slow steaming seem to be entirely skewed towards the carrier in terms of fuel cost savings and capacity restriction, while shippers are hit with the double-whammy of having to pay more through higher rates but getting a worse standard of service," Mr Heaney said.