At the end of 2014, Maersk Line and Hamburg Sud were ranked as the two most reliable container shipping carriers by shipping consultant Drewry.
Utilising a new online version of its Carrier Performance Insight, Drewry said Maersk Line and Hamburg Süd were by far the most reliable carriers in the three months to October 2014, with overall on-time performances of 80.4 per cent and 78.5 per cent, respectively.
The next best performing carrier was COSCO at 69.9 per cent, with its CKYHE Alliance partners, Evergreen, K Line, Hanjin Shipping and Yang Ming, not too far behind.
Industry-wide containership reliability improved gradually in the three-month period to October. The latest data shows that aggregate on-time performance for the Asia-Europe, Transpacific and Transatlantic trades improved to 64 per cent in October, up from 63 per cent in September and 55 per cent in August.
Aggregate Schedule Reliability of Top 20 Container Carriers
"It is a positive to see reliability improving, but the industry's on-time performance is still unacceptably low for many shippers," said Simon Heaney, senior manager of supply chain research at Drewry.
Despite the steady monthly improvement, the rolling three-month performance (August-October) was lower than for the previous three months at 60.6 per cent versus 61.1 per cent. The average deviation between the scheduled day of arrival (ETA) and actual day of arrival (ATA) remained at 1.1 day for the same period.
The Asia-Europe trade was the least reliable during August-October, with only 58 per cent of ships arriving on time, compared to 62 per cent in the Transpacific and 77 per cent in the Transatlantic.
Looking ahead, the recent drop in fuel prices could have some positive influence on reliability, said Heaney.
"Lower fuel costs won't immediately see containerships running at their design speeds. But at the very least carriers should now be more willing to speed up if they fall behind schedule."
Drewry developed the new online version of its Carrier Performance Insight in collaboration with shipment management software solutions provider CargoSmart, using Automatic Identification System (AIS) data to measure on-time port arrivals against schedules on 350 different port-pair combinations.