CMA CGM tops January schedule reliability rankings

The latest data from Sea-Intelligence showed significant changes in the reliability of the top 13 container lines. The reliability crown is often traded between Maersk and MSC, but both lines suffered a similarly significant drop in reliability from a tied 57.5% in January 2023 to 45.6% in January 2024 for Maersk and 46.0% for MSC.

CMA CGM, Wan Hai, Evergreen, OOCL, COSCO, and PIL all recorded higher reliability in Janury 2024 than a year prior, while the figure dropped for ONE, MSC, ZIM, Maersk, Hapag-Lloyd, HMM and Yang Ming, which was bottom of the table in January 2024 with 42.2%.

The figures reflect the significant disruption to normal trading from the rerouting of vessels around the Cape of Good Hope to avoid Houthi attacks in the Red Sea. CMA CGM continued to transit the Red Sea throughout January using French Naval escorts, and only announced the suspension of transits from February 1.

Average delays of 6.01 days in January 2024 were higher than any month in 2023, with average delays last topping 6 days in July 2022.

“Because of the current Red Sea crisis, and due to significant delays on the round-of-Africa sailings, none of the top-13 carriers were able to record a month-on-month improvement in schedule reliability, with only 7 carriers recording a year-on-year improvement in January 2024,” said Alan Murphy, CEO, Sea-Intelligence.

Global reliability for January 2024 was higher than for 2021 and 2022, and below 2023, 2019. and 2020. The figure of 51.6% for January continues a downward trend from the recent high of 64.4% in September 2023. Peak global reliability last year was 66.8% in May.

“Amidst the Red Sea crisis, global schedule reliability continued to decrease, and dropped by -5.1 percentage points month-on-month in January 2024 – the same month-on-month drop as in December 2023 – to 51.6%. This drop means that the January 2024 score was the lowest since September 2022,” said Murphy.

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