Shippers waiting an extra week for US-bound containers

In September, global ocean container schedule reliability declined for the fourth consecutive month, dropping 2 percentage points to 27% on-time, according to Xeneta's September Schedule Reliability Scorecard. The average vessel delay reached 6 days, up 2.4 days since the beginning of the second quarter. This decline was attributed to a combination of powerful typhoons that hit Asia from July through early September, rising bunker costs, and strong peak-season demand. Xeneta does not anticipate a significant improvement in October as Asian trade disruption persists.

Asia-linked services recorded particularly poor performance, with the Far East-to-Europe trade dropping to just 4% on-time and an average delay of 9.9 days, marking the lane's worst monthly performance since September 2021. The Far East-to-North America reliability remained unchanged at 20%, but the average delay increased by 0.8 days to 6.9 days. China port congestion was increasingly leading to berth-arrival delays for shippers in Europe and North America.

Carrier performance also suffered, with every carrier tracked by Xeneta posting their highest average delay of the past 12 months in September. Four carriers even reached 12-month lows in on-time arrivals: CMA CGM at 30%, Cosco at 18%, Hapag-Lloyd at 45% and Yang Ming at 4%. The performance gap between carriers narrowed to 43 percentage points, down from 45 points the previous month.

Maersk, the most reliable carrier, saw its on-time performance fall from 51% to 47%, while Yang Ming marked the lowest at 4%. Xeneta noted that the Gemini network of Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd, launched on the premise of on-time performance, declined more sharply than other alliances, dropping from 70% on-time in June to 40% in September.