Schedule reliability for containerships is continuing to improve in 2022 despite the persistence of backlogs in some ports and the effects of the COVID-19 related restrictions impacting Shanghai, according the new data from analytics company Sea-Intelligence.

As a provider of international container shipping services, the U-Freight Group, notes that Sea-Intelligence’s monthly Global Liner Performance report shows that for the third consecutive month reliability improved returning to the average for all of 2021.

The data shows that slightly more than a third (35.9 percent) of all containerships across the 34 different trade lanes tracked by the analysts were on schedule bringing the average for the first quarter of 2022 up to 33.5 percent.

The largest 14 carriers, reported strong monthly gains with a better than three percent improvement over February. Yet, on a year-over-year basis, they were off nearly 10 percent from March 2021 with 11 of the 14 largest carriers reporting declines in schedule reliability.

Declines in volumes and the ports' efforts to clear backlogs and space out arrivals have contributed to the overall improvements and especially for the US West Coast.

Services to the US West Coast, where the major ports implemented programmes encouraging vessels to make reservations and slow steam to port showed nearly twice the improvement versus the US East Coast routes. This also corresponds to the reports of increased volumes of containers coming through the East Coast in part as shippers began rerouting their cargoes due to the strong backlogs at West Coast ports at the beginning of the year.

Sea-Intelligence is also reporting the third consecutive month of declines in the average delays for vessels. Since the beginning of 2022, the average delay has declined by nearly three-quarters of a day but remains at 7.25 days.

You can find more information about the U-Freight Group’s ocean freight services on our website or by speaking to your usual contact in our company.