by Priya Radünzel, SeaNewsEditor
As a leader in sea logistics, Kuehne+Nagel closely tracks and collects data on the movement of vessels, including actual arrivals and vessel delays. A summary of this analysis based on neutral data is published monthly in our Schedule Reliability Report, available on Sea News.
Executive Summary
Overall global on-time performance improved by 1.3 percentage points to 47.3% in August.
Trade performance saw gains in four of the 11 major trades, with the largest improvement on North America↔North Europe, up 6.8 percentage points to 65.6%.
Conversely, the North America↔South America trade dropped by 13.4 percentage points to 43.0%.
Blank sailing data covering August (weeks 31 to 35) shows that carries blanked 8.6% of the total offered capacity on the Asia-North Europe westbound leg.
On Transpacific eastbound, 26 blanked sailings accounted for 7.8% of the total offered capacity, with 17 to the US West Coast and nine to the US East Coast.
Three blanked sailings were recorded in August on the Transatlantic westbound leg, representing less than 5% of the nearly 460,000 TEU total offered capacity.
Looking ahead, we expect the potential strikes on the US East Coast to broadly impact schedule reliability in the coming weeks.
Global On-Time Performance
Seaexplorer data records a slight improvement in on-time performance in August.
Figure(1) reveals that schedule reliability reached 47.3% last month, increasing by 1.3 percentage points.
Compared to August 2023, last month's performance was 19 percentage points lower.
Despite the slight positive development, LATE vessels' monthly average arrival delay was unchanged at 3.9 days.
This is 0.3 days higher than in August 2023.
The eight-month average for 2024 is around 4 days.
For ALL vessels, the global monthly average delay in arrival slightly increased in August to reach 2 days.
Reliability per Trade
Seaexplorer data reveals four trades contributed to the improvement in global on-time performance.
The largest gain was noted on North America↔North Europe, with reliability increasing by 6.8 percentage points to 65.6%, making it the best-performing trade for the month.
In contrast, North America↔South America declined, dropping on-time performance by 13.4 percentage points to 43.0%.
As shown in the figure above, six of the 11 major trades recorded an on-time performance of more than 50% in August.
Reliability on North America ↔ North Europe
Since North America↔North Europe showed the most significant positive development, we will examine the on-time performance of vessels on this route more closely.
On the headhaul, reliability improved by 4.3 percentage points last month, climbing to 63.4%.
As illustrated below, August's performance was the highest for 2024 thus far and follows closely behind August 2023.
LATE ships sailing from North Europe to North America had a monthly average arrival delay of 3.2 days, recording no change.
Similarly, the arrival delay of ALL vessels remained unchanged at 1.3 days.
In August, three blank sailings accounting for 4.6% of offered capacity were recorded on this leg.
Similar to the westbound voyages, eastbound vessels recorded significant improvements in August.
As shown in graph below, August's on-time performance gained 9.1 percentage points month-on-month, reaching 67.6%.
This is the highest figure recorded for this leg in the last eight months.
The monthly average arrival delay of LATE vessels sailing eastbound decreased by 0.3 days to 3.3 days in August.
Likewise, the average arrival delay of ALL vessels improved by 0.4 days, dropping to 1.1 days.
No blank sailings were recorded in August for this direction.
Methodology
Calculating the on-time performance
To calculate the on-time performance of a service, Kuehne+Nagel uses vessel schedules from carrier(s) offering that service. Only carrier schedules that match our quality criteria are used for the schedule reliability calculation.
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, Kuehne+Nagel 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.
A PDF version of this report can be found here.
