New data shows on-time container shipping suffers biggest drop in 5 years

Severe weather disturbances in Asia have caused a significant decline in global container shipping's on-time performance, according to a new report from Sea Intelligence. The report reveals that global container vessel schedule reliability dropped to 56.4% in July 2026, a 6.1% decrease from June, marking the sharpest single-month decline since January 2021.

At the same time, the average delay for late vessel arrivals increased to 6.06 days, up more than a half-day month-over-month. The decline in on-time vessel arrivals was primarily driven by congestion in major Asian ports. All 14 of the region's busiest ports experienced a decrease in schedule reliability. Yantian saw the most significant drop, with reliability falling by 23.5 percentage points to 48.3%.

Hong Kong and Ningbo also experienced substantial declines, with reliabilities dropping by 20.4 and 20.1 percentage points, respectively. Shanghai's schedule reliability was described as "particularly alarming," as only 21% of container vessels arrived on time in July, following a steep decline of 19.2 percentage points. The situation in other Asia hubs was also concerning, with Singapore's on-time reliability dropping to 43.2% from a 5.7 percentage point decrease in June, and Busan's reliability falling to 40.9%.

The report warns that with more than half of incoming vessels delayed in the region's busiest ports, the backlog will cascade through the maritime network, potentially triggering a new wave of delays for critical headhaul trade lanes in the coming months.