The on-time performance of ocean carriers on the Asia-Europe trade lane in December fell to levels not seen since October 2022 and is likely to deteriorate further as the container fleet continues to divert around southern Africa to avoid ongoing attacks on commercial shipping in and around the Red Sea.
Carriers have also warned shippers to prepare for further disruption to their supply chains as ports are omitted to try to make up time lost to the longer voyages, adding unplanned transshipment moves to cargo bound for Europe and the Mediterranean.
“Rotations will be changed and vessels will be added to limit the disruption on sailing schedules of the rerouting via the Cape,” Mediterranean Shipping Co. said in a customer advisory this week. MSC added that its ships would not be transiting the Red Sea, either eastbound or westbound, “until Red Sea passage is safe again.”
Arrival delays caused by the sudden changes to voyage routings were reflected in schedule reliability data. On the Asia-North Europe corridor, schedule reliability in December fell 9.2 percentage points from November to 46.4%, according to Sea-Intelligence Maritime Analysis.
It was the lowest reliability since October 2022 when severe congestion choked ports at both ends of the trade lane. Ships arrived in North European ports almost five days late on average in December, one day later than in November.
On the backhaul Europe-Asia trade lane, the on-time performance of vessels in December declined 8 percentage points to 64.8%.
Asia-Mediterranean schedule reliability fell 3.2 percentage points to 63.5% last month. Sea-Intelligence data shows the average arrival delay for ships in the Mediterranean was just short of seven days in December, up 2.59 days from November.
Details please refer to JOC news.
Source:
Knowler, G. (2024c, January 26). Red Sea diversions drag carrier schedule reliability to 2022 levels. Journal of Commerce. https://www.joc.com/article/red-sea-diversions-drag-carrier-schedule-reliability-2022-levels_20240126.html