Extra buffer improves timekeeping

Monday, 08 February 2010

It is a pleasure to be able to report a definite improvement over the past 12 months in the timekeeping of carriers serving the Europe-South-East Asia trade, although given the widespread adoption of more relaxed schedules and the extra buffer time that this entails, the results are still somewhat disappointing. 

The accompanying schedule reliability table ranks the services that were available to shippers during the 20-week monitoring window covered by this survey, but the glut of restructuring projects in recent months has meant that of the 21 loops monitored, only 12 are still in operation. 

Of the nine others, the CKYH lines (Cosco, “K” Line, Yangming and Hanjin) were responsible for five of them and the Grand Alliance (Hapag-Lloyd, NYK, OOCL and MISC) for four. 

The nine have been replaced by the six new loops listed at the bottom of the table (three for each grouping), but as they have only just been introduced, there is as yet no possibility of assessing them. 

On the whole, the nine discontinued operations were not too impressive, with the obvious exception of Hanjin’s FEX loop, which had a perfect record at Singapore. The Grand Alliance EU1 was looked promising, but its result was marred by the unfortunate incident when a crane collapsed onto the NYK Themis at Southampton, leading to a ten-day-late arrival at Singapore. 

The other CKYH and Grand Alliance loops failed to match up to these, and neither grouping is thus in the running for Star Performer in the South-East Asia trade lane this time around. 

Of the continuing operations, the CMA CGM FAL3, the two MSC strings and the UASC AEC2 lurked in the bottom four places. 

The underlying problem for UASC was the disruption caused by the many changes it has implemented in the past year. The AEC2 was only launched in its current form in September, and in the nine weeks that fell within the data window of this survey, it failed to bed in satisfactorily, but will hopefully be helped by the recent addition of an extra week to the schedule. 

A problem that has become increasingly familiar on the Europe-Far East route in the recent past is the temporary slowing down of ships on the eastbound leg, sometimes to allow a new ship to be brought in or to skip a sailing, and also to provide a bit of breathing space. 

As these are not permanent changes to the pro forma pattern, it results in a run of arrivals that are much later than listed in the forward schedule, and both the CMA CGM FAL3 and MSC Silk service fell victim to these temporary adjustments. 

Higher up the table, the New World Alliance occupied three of the leading eight positions, with the JEX and SCX the most impressive of the three (although the former omitted its eastbound sailing one week). Both the JEX and AEX have since been extended by a week, meaning even more slack in their schedules. 

Last year’s winner Evergreen could only be monitored for 15 weeks, following the July restoration of the CES loop, but was not quite punctual enough at Tanjung Pelepas to challenge for the top spot. 

The joint CMA CGM/CSCL FAL2/AEX7 had a 100% on time record at Port Klang, but it is an odd case, as the long-term schedule had been adjusted to allow for vessels returning to Asia via the Cape of Good Hope rather than Suez – meaning very early arrivals at Port Kelang for several weeks. The partners also omitted two eastbound sailings, which rules this operation out of the reckoning for top spot. 

This leaves us with Maersk Line, which like the New World Alliance filled three of the top eight positions. The AE10 was the weakest of the three, but mainly due to a delay in October to one ship, which ended up arriving at Singapore six days late. 

The AE9 and AE2 were both very good, with the latter actually recording a 100% on-day-arrival record at Tanjung Pelepas. Maersk’s overall average at our base ports of 0.18 days late was certainly good enough to merit Star Performer status in this survey – an excellent start for the line in this year’s Liner Analysis cycle. 

Transit times to the region have inevitably been affected by the widespread trend for slower steaming, although a closer look reveals that this varies considerably. From the UK to Singapore, average scheduled times on direct loops have only risen a little since last year, but have gone up substantially on the two remaining services to Port Klang. 

After the latest round of service adjustments, the best scheduled times to Singapore are offered by the CKYH grouping and the Grand Alliance. These include 19 days from Felixstowe on the CKYH NE1 and NE3, and from Southampton on the Grand Alliance EUA, while the Grand partners also schedule times of 21 days on the parallel EUC. 

Only one other service from the UK can compete with these relatively fast times, and that is the New World Alliance AEX, whose scheduled transits from Thamesport are currently 20 days (having just been lifted from 18 days). 

Incidentally, the CKYH lines have just extended the eastbound rotation of both the NE1 and NE4 loops, although at the time of writing this appeared to be a temporary measure aimed at losing a week’s sailing over the quiet Chinese New Year period. It is unclear at present whether they will revert to the shorter pattern after this, although the NE1 would still remain a reasonably fast option. 

To Malaysia, CMA CGM still offers the fastest service direct from the UK to Port Klang through the FAL3, despite adding a week to its rotation in January – scheduled times from Southampton are now 25 rather than 20 days. 

To Tanjung Pelepas, Evergreen’s CES now takes 24 days from Thamesport, and Maersk’s AE2 from Felixstowe is now a couple of days faster on paper. Maersk’s AE9 is considerably longer to both Malaysian ports, but does have the advantage of including a call at Laem Chabang – the only fully-containerised service in the trade to include a direct call in Thailand. 

Given the many recent operational changes, it would be rather irrelevant to take historical transit times into account to rank carriers, and as such there are no Star Performers listed in the UK transit times category.