As a leader in sea logistics, Kuehne+Nagel closely tracks and collects data on the movement of vessels, including actual arrivals and vessel delays. Starting this month, Kuehne+Nagel will be publishing a summary of this analysis in monthly Schedule Reliability reports based entirely on neutral data. This summary is available within SeaNews in seaexplorer as well as in myKN for all Kuehne+Nagel customers and myKN subscribers.
Global On-Time Performance
During the past quarter, on-time performance remained relatively stable after it jumped nearly 10% from 45.6% in September to 55.5% in October. In December, schedule reliability continued to improve, reaching an all-year high at 56.5%. Contributing factors to this improvement are lower congestion at ports and decreased shipping demand.
The data for January 2023 reveals that global performance continues to be relatively high despite dropping to 52.4%. Compared to January 2022, schedule reliability improved by 16.8% but dropped 4.1% month-on-month.
In terms of vessel delays, the global monthly average of the delay in the arrival of LATE vessels increased by 0.3 days compared to last month but remained practically the same year-on-year. LATE vessels arrived with an average delay of 4.4 days in January 2022, while the average for January 2023 was 4.5 days.
On the other hand, the monthly average delay for ALL vessels improved year-on-year by almost 27%, moving from 2.6 days to 1.9 days. However, the delay increased by almost half a day compared to December 2022.
Reliability per Trade Lane
Of the three major trade lanes (trans-Pacific, trans-Atlantic and Asia-Europe), the lane with the best on-time performance in January was Asia-North Europe. Schedule reliability on this route reached 49.7%.
In contrast, vessels on the trans-Pacific were the least on schedule, with a reliability of 34.3% last month. In comparison to the data of December 2022, the reliability of this trade dropped from 42.0% to 34.3% in January 2023.
Ships on the trans-Atlantic improved their on-time performance from 31.7% in December 2022 to 45.7% in January.
Methodology
Calculating the on-time performance
To calculate the on-time performance of a service, KN uses vessel schedules from carrier(s) offering that service. As carriers update schedules constantly, they become more accurate the closer vessels get to a destination port. For this reason, we have implemented a "schedule freeze period" of 14 days prior to actual vessel arrival. In other words, we benchmark the actual arrival with what carriers last announced 14 days earlier. To identify the actual time of arrival, KN consumes AIS (Automatic Identification System) vessel data. All vessels which arrive within a +/- 24-hour window at the port of destination compared to the last announced arrival are considered to be on time.
Assigning carrier services to multiple trade lanes
Many services operate on various trade lanes (e.g. a carrier service between Asia and North Europe also calls ports in the Middle East and or the Mediterranean), and therefore carrier services may be listed in multiple trade lanes.
Definition of trade lanes
There is no common standard for the definition of trade lanes. This means, depending on the source, you will find different trade lanes as well as different regions, countries and ports assigned to a trade lane. Kuehne+Nagel has defined its own way of mapping and has assigned ports to these trade lanes accordingly. On-time performances of vessels are captured in our reports on defined main trades, meaning trades moving large container volumes on vessels. Therefore, niche trades and services within one trade, called „Intra Trade“ services (e.g. Intra-Asia, Intra-Europe) are currently out of scope.
