Sharp increase in global schedule reliability in May 2025

Global ocean carrier schedule reliability improved by 7.4 percentage points to 65.8 per cent in May compared to the previous month to the highest level recorded since November 2023, Sea Intelligence reported.

That is interesting news for the U-Freight Group with our comprehensive portfolio of international container shipping services for both LCL and FCL import and export cargoes and continues the trend of consistent month over month improvements since February this year.

The Sea Intelligence report states that on a year on year level, schedule reliability was up 10.0 percentage points. Maersk was the most reliable top-13 carrier with schedule reliability of 75.9%, followed by Hapag-Lloyd with 72.5%. The next six carriers were in the 60%-70% range, and the remaining carriers were in the 55%-60% range. ONE had the lowest May 2025 schedule reliability of 55.1%.

Traditionally, alliance scores are based on just the arrivals in destination regions, but as that metric was not available for the new alliances in February, Sea Intelligence says it introduced a new measure, based on all arrivals, including the origin region calls on the East/West trades.

It continues to present both measures, “All arrivals” which is comparable to the February measure, and “Trade arrivals”, which is comparable to the “old” alliances. When the new alliances are fully rolled out, these two measures will converge.

In April/May 2025, Gemini Cooperation recorded 90.9% schedule reliability across ALL arrivals, and 88.4% across TRADE arrivals, followed by MSC at 70.5% for ALL arrivals and 77.9% for TRADE arrivals, while Premier Alliance recorded 55.2% for ALL arrivals and 52.7% across TRADE Arrivals. For the “old” alliances, “ALL arrivals” are equal to “TRADE arrivals”, and Ocean Alliance scored 57.4%.

It is important to stress though, that the new alliances will only be fully rolled out in July 2025, and only then will it be possible to truly evaluate their performance.

For more information about our ocean freight forwarding and logistics services, please visit the relevant pages of this website, or contact your local office, which can be seen here: https://ufreight.com/locations