By Eric Huang.          Photo：Julia Volk

In the past two years, the COVID-19 epidemic has had the greatest impact on the international logistics industry. In addition to the previously unattainable freight rates, the other is the delay in vessels schedules caused by port congestion in Europe and US, and even the delay rate of major shipping lines has hit a record high in history. However, in the post-epidemic period, due to the impact of stagnant inflation on the global economy, rising prices and reduced demand, the international freight volume has plummeted. In addition to the cliff-like decline in freight rates, it has also slowed down the pressure of port congestion and brought the sluggish vessels schedule reliability rate back to the high point of 20 months ago.

According to the latest Global Liner Performance (GLP) report released by the Danish maritime data analysis company Sea-Intelligence, as of August this year, the schedule reliability of 34 different trade routes and more than 60 shipping lines continued to rise. Over the past year and a half, only one-third of container vessels have been able to sail reliably on time, and the global supply chain has shown strong progress, with major shipping lines reaching a reliable vessels schedule in 20 months. Nearly half of the container vessels were running exactly as planned in August 2022, and average delays also continued to improve significantly as global supply chains reported lower freight volumes and retreated from the surge experienced in 2021. Among the major shipping lines, Maersk continues to show the best vessels schedule reliability with 53% of services, while half of the top 15 shipping lines have reliability above 40% of vessels schedule in August 2022. Asia-based shipping lines were particularly strong, including Evergreen, OOCL, Wan Hai, Philippine International and COSCO, each of which increased by at least 100% compared to August 2021. Average vessels schedule reliability for the top 15 shipping lines jumped from 25% in August 2021 to nearly 41% this year. However, Yang Ming Line's vessels schedule reliability is the lowest among all major shipping lines, only 29.8%.

Alan Murphy, CEO of Sea-Intelligence, highlighted that global vessels’ reliability continues to trend upwards, with average delays for major shipping lines falling sharply so far this year, which has fallen to the lowest since April 2021. The lowest level and the second time in 20 months that the average delay is less than 6 days. Container vessels schedule reliability has remained low throughout 2021. It reached a low point in January 2022, when less than a third of vessels were able to reliably operate as planned by shipping lines.

While the international logistics industry is in the traditional peak season ahead of the year-end holidays, it remains to be seen if shipping lines can continue these improvements as freight volumes continue to decline. Facing the phenomenon of overcapacity for the first time in two years, shipping lines are increasing the use of blank sailings again and supplemented by methods such as route integration to increase the reliability of vessels schedules. This week, both MSC and Maersk announced they would suspend most routes from Asia to Europe and the United States to manage capacity and reduce number of vessels, which will further reduce the backlog of vessels at port. MSC is consolidating all routes from Asia to the US West Coast, and Maersk is taking a similar approach to consolidating routes from Asia to the US East Coast. Fewer vessels arriving at U.S. ports, especially at East Coast ports with the most backlogs in Savannah and Charleston, will help further improve shipping lines’ schedules. However, shipping lines will also consolidate freight volumes to maximize vessels’ space utilization, which means that shipping lines will still take longer to call at port to process the containers they bring in.

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