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 slightly dropped from 50.2% in May to 49.9% in June.
The Red Sea situation, port congestion and increased demand keep reliability significantly below 2023 levels in June. This trend may persist into the next months.
Trade performance decreased on five of the 11 major trades. The largest decrease was on Asia↔North Europe of 7.3 percentage points to 34.9%.
In contrast, the largest improvement was on the Asia↔North America trade, which increased by 2.6 percentage points to 56.6%.
Blank sailing data covering June (weeks 23 to 26) shows that carries blanked nearly 5% of the total offered capacity on the westbound leg of the Asia-North Europe trade.
On the eastbound of the Transpacific, carriers announced 20 blanked sailings during that period, representing around 8% of the total capacity offered.
In contrast, the figures were lower for the westbound leg of the Transatlantic, where only 3% of the capacity was blanked.
Global On-Time Performance
According to seaexplorer data, last month’s global on-time performance was the third highest percentage seen this year.
Figure(1) reveals that schedule reliability reached 49.4%, dropping 0.8 percentage points from May.
On a year-on-year comparison, last month’s performance was 15.4 percentage points lower than May 2023.
Despite the slight drop in on-time performance, the monthly average arrival delay of LATE vessels improved.
Compared to May, the monthly average improved by 0.3 days to 3.8 days.
This average has remained relatively stable this year, as delays ranged between 4.1 and 3.8 days over the last six months.
For ALL vessels, the global monthly average delay in arrival had a slightly smaller decrease compared to LATE vessels.
The figure improved by 0.1 days month-on-month to reach 1.8 days in June.
This average is the lowest for the year so far.
Reliability per Trade
Our data shows that five trades contributed to last month’s global decrease.
The schedule reliability on Asia↔North Europe decreased by 7.3 percentage points to 34.9% from May’s 42.2%.
In contrast, the on-time performance of vessels on Asia↔North America increased by 2.6 percentage points from May’s 54.0% to 56.6% in June.
A similar increase occurred for the Transatlantic trade, where the percentage increased by 2.5 percentage points month-on-month to 64.8%.
Other trades which saw improvements were Asia↔Oceania, Mediterranean/Black Sea ↔ North America, Mediterranean/Black Sea ↔ North Europe, and Mediterranean/Black Sea ↔ South America.
Reliability on Asia ↔ Oceania
Given that Asia↔Oceania had the largest positive development, we examine the on-time performance of vessels on this route more closely.
On the southbound, we see the on-time performance increased by 7.4 percentage points to 45%.
This figure is the highest seen this year for this leg, as illustrated in the graph below.
LATE ships travelling from Asia to Oceania had a monthly average arrival delay of 3.8 days.
Seaexplorer data shows that this figure increased by 0.2 days compared to May.
An increase in schedule reliability is also seen on the northbound leg of Asia↔Oceania.
Compared to May, the percentage gained five percentage points, reaching 51.7%
The monthly average arrival delay of LATE vessels on this leg had a slight month-on-month decrease from 3.7 days to 3.6 days in June.
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.
