Schedule reliability improves as consequence of ‘slow-steaming’

Wednesday, 28 October 2009

The extension of round-voyage times has been an important factor in the improvement in average schedule reliability of container services to Japan/South Korea in the past year or so.

Although some of these extensions have been due to the amalgamation of services, requiring port calls to be squeezed into fewer loops than previously, they have also been encouraged by the popularity of ‘slow-steaming’, a strategy aimed at saving on fuel costs at a time of high bunker prices.

Only a couple of lines came up with disappointing results in this year’s survey, in both cases on operations whose only calls in this region are at Busan. In both cases the main problem appears to have been the introduction of a new ship – in MSC’s case an additional one as the ‘Lion’ rotation was extended – and this meant that several following ships had to be slowed down by a week during their Asian rotation to take the following westbound schedule position.

As Busan comes at the end of the eastbound run, this meant that on several sailings arrivals at the port were around seven days later than the pro forma schedule on both operations.

These problems should hopefully be resolved now that MSC has settled into its new 11-week pattern, and UASC has converted its AEC1 service into the revised AEC2.

On the other operations, the only setback of real note was suffered by the Grand Alliance on their EU1 loop. This was the well-covered incident involving the collapse of a gantry crane onto the NYK Themis while she was loading at Southampton in July.

This led to the ship arriving nine days late in Japan – a voyage that spoilt the overall result, as ships on all other EU1 sailings during the monitoring period were on time at both Japanese base ports, Kobe and Tokyo.

The other three arrivals that were late enough to merit a mention were all at Busan – one ship on the Grand Alliance EU4 was five days late, and a couple on the New World Alliance AEX six and four days behind the forward schedule. These sailings apart, time-keeping on both operations was commendable.

The selection of Star Performer in this category is influenced by the fact that on three operations there were no eastbound sailings on certain weeks of the monitoring period, partly due to slow business that did not justify the full quota of weekly sailings.

The operations involved include the Grand Alliance EU1 and New World Alliance JEX, which omitted their sailings to Japan on two and three of the 20 weeks covered. One ship on the latter also skipped the whole Japanese rotation on one occasion in May when she was being phased out.

There were also gaps in our data for the MSC Lion service to South Korea – the usual large ships were absent on the eastbound leg on two weeks, while calls at Busan were not registered in the Informa database on a few other occasions.

To Busan, this left the Maersk AE2 in top spot with a 100% record, although the now-replaced Hanjin-run FEX ran it close.

Maersk also takes the laurels for Japan, with another excellent punctuality record on its AE10 loop.

As for transit times, these have inevitably been affected by the trend towards longer round voyages, and times from the UK have been further hit by the loss of UK calls on both suspended and continuing operations.

Thus in the Japanese trade, the CKYH grouping has lost its direct service from Felixstowe due to the termination of the PM1 operation, and with the New World Alliance still preferring to restrict its JEX calls to the Continent, there are now just two direct services from the UK to the main range of Japanese ports.

Yet there is no comparison between them in terms of transit times, as Maersk calls at Felixstowe right at the beginning of its North European rotation, and sails from the UK a full 12 days before its departure from the last loading port, Le Havre. The Grand Alliance EU1 is thus an easy winner in this category.

To South Korea, the Grand Alliance and Maersk Line stood out with their times from Southampton and Felixstowe respectively, but Maersk proved to have that slight edge.